J  Oi 


2189 

B32 

H53 


UB. 


Y 


INIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


6^  -^ 

H^3 


D'Aurevilly  thc13iabolist 

By   BENJAMIN   DE   CASSERES. 

THE  lid  is  lifting.    Not  the  alcoholic 
lid,  but  the  literary  lid.    Mars  has 
pried  the  top  off.     Beneath,  Continental 

literature  is  taking  a  squint  at  America, 
and  we,  on  the  other  hand,  are  beginning 
to  display  a  healthy  curiosity  about  the 
great  writers  of  the  continent  that  pro- 
duced man-sized  literature.  Russia, 
France,  Italj',  Spain  and  Belgium  are  no 
longer  only  the  picnic  gi'ounds  of  the  Chi- 
cago tourist.  Their  lives  have  heretofore 
been  roimded  in  a  Baedeker. 

To  tlie  left,  the  famous  Steppes,  ladies 
and  gentlemen;  to  the  right,  Paris,  home 
of  Louis  the  Fourteenth ;  to  the  south  you 
will  perceive  Italy,  janitor  of  the  Coli- 
seum and  Pompeii,  which  you  have  all 
heard  about;  that  is  Spain,  where  the 
Alhambra — and  so  forth. 

■^niis  is  passed.     The  Continental  mas- 
ters   are    being   translated   and    eaten    a 
I' America!  ne — all  in  a  lump,  en  casserole, 
scrambled.     But  though  we  get  indiges- 
tion of  the  wit  and  develop   a  cerebral 
corporation,  the  thing  is  good.    It  sounds 
the  knell   of  the  Great  British  Literary 
Superstition.     It  will  result  in  a  second 
declaration,'   of    independence — this    time 
against  the  literary  oligarchs  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge.    James  Huneker  and  Ed- 
gar Sail  us  were  right — there  are  men  in 
Continental    Europe    who    can    write    as 
well  as  Emerson  and  a  little  better  than 
Macaulay! 

There  was  Barbey  D'Aurevilly,  for  in- 
stance. Among  Americans  he  is  probably 
the  least  known  of  the  great  French  wri- 
ters of  the  last  centurv.     The  Louis  Li- 


D'Aurevilly's  Th-e  Story  Without  a  Name, 
translated  and  introduced  by  Edg^ar  Sal- 
tus. 

A  beautiful  literary  combination — 
D'Aurevilly  and  Saltus.  It  is  Ritz-Carl- 
Ibn  fare  served  in  plates  of  jade  by  nuns 
in  red.  It  is  like  reading  tbe  Book  of 
Job  with  an  introduction  by  Thomas  a 
Kem.piSi  or  Don  Quixote,  with  a  foreword 
by  Hamlet.  I  believe  that  Saltus  could 
have  done  all  that  Barbey  did;  but  that 
Barbey  could  not  have  done  what  Sal- 
tus did.  Saltas's  sense  of  humor  is  so 
catastrophic  that  it  swallows  up  hell; 
Barbey's  sense  of  hell  was  so  acute  that  it 
swallowed  up  Barbey.  Saltus  can  kid 
the  Furies,  josh  Parabrahma,  and  loop- 
the-loop  with  the  Eternal  Return;  but 
Barbey — supremely  great  artist  that  he 
was — is  always  doing  the  fee-fi-fo-fum 
stuff  with  priests  and  sleep  walkers,  crim- 
son curtains  and  human  hearts  (in  one  oi 
his  stories  in  Les  DiahoUques  husband 
and  wife  play  parlor  baseball  with  a^ 
child's  heart) . 

As  George  Moore  is  a  Frank  Harris 
who   can   write,   so   Barbey   D'Aurevilly 
plaj'ed  Boswell  to   Satan.     He  was  the 
observ^ed  of  all  on  the  Boulevards.    He  al- 
ways appeared,  in  his  curious  Beau  Nash 
get-up,  between  the  5  o'clock  absinthe  and 
Ihe  overture  to  "The  Bohemian  Girl" — 
(is  thero  one?'  Maybe  it  is  "Fra  Diavolo" 
I  was  thinking  of) .    He  wrote  tremendous 
thrillers  in  a  garret  for  Stendhal's  limited 
edition  of  human  beings— the  Appercep- 
tive Eight,  scattered  throughout  the  world 
in  all  time,  who  spend  their  years  on  psy- 
chical Battery  benches  scanning  the  ar- 
rival of  a  Leviathanful  of  ahead-of-the- 
times  geniuses. 


D'Aurevilly's  Les  Diaholiqties  are  starky 

Hiorrible.    They  dish  up  the  depths.  After 

dreading  them  you  are  hell  proof.    If  Poe, 

fDante;    Hoffmann    and    Baudelaire    ever 

meet  \:\  the  cenacle  of  the  tomb,  they  will 

prohnbly  elect  Barbey  D'Aurevilly,  if  not 

president  of  their  club,  then  chief  angel 

bouncer.     He  had   monstrous   ideas  and 

mirific   words   in   which   to   embed   them. 

He  took  the  serpents^ -frojn.  the  heads  of 

the  Furies  and  put  them  into  magnificent 
ibow  cases  on  the  Boulevard — he  mean- 
while headed  for  a  Duchess. 

"The  Story  Without  a  Name"  is  one 
of  his  greatest  masterpieces.  A  town 
buried  in  the  mountains — the  Pit  of  the 
human  heart  and  the  Pendulum  of  fatal- 
ity above  it.  A  priest,  a  girl  who  is  a 
somnambulist,  a  religious  mother,  a  baby 
born  of  the  priest  and  the  sleepwalker, 
the  suicide  of  the  girl — pins  in  the  heart 
and  the  reversion  of  the  priest  to  type — 
theft  and  other  incidentals  of  human  na- 
ture. But  no  bare  outline  of  the  story 
can  give  any  idea  of  its  power,  its  stark, 
mhuman  terror,  its  atmosphere  of  un-j 
wholesome  damnation.  Succubus  is  the 
heroine  and  an  Immanent  lago  the  hero. 
The  introduction  by  Edgar  Saltus  was 
done  with  a  diamond  dipped  in  ichor. 


THE 
STORY    WITHOUT    A    NAME 


W6Jt 


Copyright,   1919,  by 
BRENTANO'S 


Barbey  D'Aurevilly 

WE  usually  get  what  we  want,  if 
we  know  how  to  want  it,  but 
we  get  too  the  consequences.  Balzac 
wanted  fame.  The  strumpet  came  and 
killed  him.  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  wanted 
obscurity  and  acquired  it  so  amply  that 
when  I  presented  an  earlier  translation 
of  The  Story  Without  a  Name,  a  local 
critic,  who  contrived  to  be  both  com- 
plimentary and  amusing,  said  I  had  in- 
vented Barbey  and  that  the  vile  story 
was  my  own  vile  work.  Inique  mais 
folichon. 

The  Story  Without  a  Name  is  a  mas- 
terpiece in  duo-decimo.  Very  soberly 
told,  it  is  unexceeded  in  fiendishness, 

[5] 


OOCT/fl  r^r-tTk 


Introduction 

except  by  the  Huns  and  the  Conte  cruel 
that  Villiers  told  of  the  fervent  Inquisi- 
tion. Another  man  overboard.  Out- 
side the  cenacle — w^here  he  is  much 
overrated — Villiers  de  I'lsle  Adam  is 
remarkably  unknown.  But  that  story 
of  his  w^ill  live  when  French  is  a  dead 
language.  It  may  be  that  Salammbo 
will  survive  it.  Personally,  I  would 
rather  have  written  Salammbo  than 
own  New  York.  For  second  choice  I 
would  take  Villiers'  little  horror  and, 
for  third,  Barbey's. 

Barbey's  other  novels  are  more  col- 
ored and  less  poignant.  It  is  not  given 
to  every  writer  to  surprise  an  unsuspect- 
ing-  reader  in  bed  and  make  him  shriek 
with  fright.  Barbey  did  it  once  and 
once  is  enormous.  Twice  would  be 
excessive.  Sacrilege  and  sorcery,  shapes 
of    sin,    les    vieux    castels,    th^s^,    to- 

[6] 


Introduction 

gether  with  cognate  accessories,  he 
manipulated  in  an  atmosphere  charged 
with  shivers  and  occasionally  with  chic. 
Here  and  there  the  chic  is  circumambi- 
ent. In  the  odor  of  that  opopanax 
you  might  fancy  that  if  he  ever  stopped 
writing,  it  was  because  of  imperative 
intrigues  with  incandescent  duchesses 
who,  save  for  him,  would  be  ice.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  his  main  diversion  con- 
sisted in  exchanging  the  time  of  day 
with  his  concierge.  I  would  give  a  red 
pippin  to  have  seen  him  at  it. 

Otherwise  his  life  was  very  enviable. 
He  wrote  for  himself — which  is  the  only 
way  to  write — and  for  thirty-six  un- 
known friends.  That  is  the  ideal.  Too 
fair  though.  Bourget,  always  perti- 
nacious, ferreted  him  out,  turned  him 
into  copy. 

[7] 


Introduction 

"At  the  hour  when,  the  curtains  drawn,  the 
candles  hghted,  this  alchemist  elaborates  his 
work,  little  he  cares  whether  or  not  it  will 
interest  you.  You,  the  future  reader,  are  ab- 
sent from  his  mind.  Is  there  without  a  world 
of  vulgar  sensations  and  commonplace  destinies? 
He  knows  nothing  of  it.  He  is  absorbed  in  his 
characters.  Yes,  in  the  literal  meaning  of  the 
word,  his  characters,  for  he  has  projected  them 
from  his  brain,  as  Jupiter  projected  Minerva, 
engendered  and  nourished  by  the  purest  sub- 
stance of  his  being." 

If  I  did  not  know  that  Bourget  wrote 
the  foregoing,  I  would  suspect  him  of  it. 
Barring  only  Georges  Ohnet,  I  know  of 
no  French  writer  who  has  succeeded  so 
perfectly  in  being  both  emphatic  and 
banal.  Besides,  as  my  friend  Willy 
somewhere  remarked:  "Quand  Ohnet 
mord  c'est  pour  longtemps."  Ohnet  is 
very  satisfying.  In  reading  him  you 
realise  that  nowhere,  at  any  time,  has 
there    been    anything   worse.     Bourget 

[8] 


Introduction 

lacks  that  distinction.  He  gives  the  im- 
pression that  there  may  be.  something- 
worse  and  yet  manages  to  leave  you 
wondering. 

Paul  de  Saint-Victor  strums  a  differ- 
ent guitar.  Hugo  said  it  was  a  joy  to 
write  a  book  which  Saint-Victor  would 
write  about.  Barbey  said  nothing.  He 
preferred  to  be  ignored. 

Here  is  the  s:uitar. 


fe ' 


"In  Barbey  d'Aurevilly's  work  there  is  some- 
thing brutal  and  exquisite,  violent  and  tender. 
It  is  like  the  philters  that  sorcerers  brewed  in 
which  were  asphodels  and  vipers,  tiger's  blood 
and  honey.  Never  has  language  been  raised  to 
a  prouder  paroxysm." 

One  may  wonder  what  a  proud  par- 
oxysm is,  but  otherwise  the  image 
leaps.  Barbey  wrote  on  a  piano.  You 
might  guess  it,  precisely  as  you  might 
guess    that    Hugo   wrote   in    a   pulpit. 

[91 


Introduction 

Hugo  lifted  the  pulpit  to  where  all  of 
this    world   and    portions    of    the    next 
could  see  it.     Barbey  turned  the  piano 
into  a  palette.     After  Balzac  it  was  as- 
sumed   that    no    one    could    startle    a 
printer.     Balzac  wrote  on  proof-sheets, 
rewrote  the  proofs,  made  abracadabras 
of  them  and  ran  in  debt  for  the  costs. 
He    owed    as    much    as    Dumas    made. 
Dumas  was  prince  of  the  pen — without 
at    all    being-    lord    of    language — and 
Balzac  the  galley-slave.     Fame  has  her 
forms. 

Barbev's  method  was  more  ornate. 
On  his  piano  were  inks — gold,  blue,  red, 
green,  black.  Every  emotion  has  its 
color,  every  note  in  music  has.  Rim- 
baud, a  poet — one  of  the  poetes  maudits 
— sang  a  sonnet  about  the  colors  of  the 
vowels.  Unphilosophic  persons  who 
get  in  a   temper  may  not   see  red  but 

[lo'] 


Introduction 

psychically  they  radiate  it.  The  aura 
of  the  jealous  shows  not  green  but  yel- 
low. The  aurse  of  sweethearts  and 
swains  are  blue.  What  recent  occult- 
ism has  discovered,  Barbey  divined. 
According  to  the  emotion  that  he  de- 
picted he  used  the  corresponding  ink. 
It  was  certainly  ornate.  Yet,  as  no  one 
except  his  printer  saw  the  rainbows, 
it  was  perhaps  also  insane.  The  rain- 
bows had  another  charm.  I  have  ex- 
amined a  few  of  them.  Not  a  correc- 
tion in  the  lot.  They  were  painted  with 
a  pen  that  ran. 

An  ability  to  write  in  that  fashion 
may  indicate  the  genius,  but  hardly 
the  purist.  Geniuses  often  write  badly 
and  as  much  the  better  for  them.  Bal- 
zac is  atrocious.  It  is  only  in  inferior 
artists  that  you  get  what  young  ladies 
call  style.     Style  consists  in  sandpaper, 

[11] 


Introduction 

the  choice  of  words  and  in  so  manipulat- 
ing both  that  occasionally  the  words 
seem     to     leap,     laugh     and     explode. 

Grammar  is  an  adjunct,  not  an  obli- 
gation. No  grammarian  ever  wrote  a 
thing  that  is  fit  to  read. 

Barbey's  sentences  are  none  the  less 
canonical.  How,  without  revision,  he 
managed  it,  is  conjectural  only  on  the 
supposition  that  he  rehearsed  them,  at 
the  top  of  his  lungs,  as  Flaubert  did,  be- 
fore putting  them  down.  In  a  minor 
matter,  he  had  another  similarity  with 
Flaubert.  A  minor  matter  may  be  mo- 
mentous. Any  conversation  with  a 
stranger  gave  him  a  pain  in  the  stom- 
ach. He  was  shy  and  yet,  through  an 
agreeable  contradiction,  superb  or  so  re- 
garded himself.  The  leveled  eyeglass, 
the  curl  of  the  lip,  the  easy  insolence,  the 
attitude  which  it  pleased  him  to  affect, 

[12] 


Introduction 

all  that  was  modeled  after  Brummel 
whose  cigarette  stumps  he  had  pocketed. 
Zola  called  him  a  clown.  Well,  why 
not?  A  clown  is  often  brilliant,  which 
Zola  never  was.  Moreover,  Barbey's 
sentences  in  addition  to  being  canonical 
are  often  profound,  and  any  profundities 
of  Zola  could  play  tag  on  the  head  of  a 
pin.  But  Zola  had  his  hour.  During 
it  he  was  Jupiter  Feuilletonant.  As 
such,  homage  was  indicated.  All  he 
got  from  Barbey  was  an  ignoring  stare. 
In  return,  Zola  ridiculed  him,  laughed  at 
his  clothes,  at  his  garret.  Perhaps  aft- 
erward he  wished  he  had  held  his  pen. 
In  a  cafe  that  Barbey  frequented, 
Valles,  the  mad  anarchist,  shouted: 
"We  want  the  heads  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand imbeciles."  Negligently  Barbey 
3^awned:  "Zola's  ought  to  suffice."  At 
that,   some   one   cut   in:     "He   will   be 

[13] 


Introduction 

astonished  when  he  hears  it."  Now  for 
the  superb.  Barbey  raised  his  eyeglass: 
"Since  civilization  began,  men  such  as 
I,  have  been  created  to  astonish  men 
such  as  he."  A  trifle  too  superb  per- 
haps, but  finer  than  Zola's  brickbats. 

Barbey  came  by  it  naturally.  Villiers 
was  more  or  less  authentically  comte 
and  claimed  a  more  or  less  authentic 
descent  from  a  problematic  crusader. 
But  if  I  have  the  facts  correctly,  Barbey 
descended  from  one  of  the  numbered 
Louis'  of  France.  Nowadays,  the  blood 
of  kings — unless  you  can  take  it  away 
from  them — is  not  much  to  boast  of. 
Yet,  at  the  time,  it  produced  the  superb 
which  Barbey  and  Villiers  paraded. 
Apart  from  that,  Barbey  was  Gautier  in 
black. 

Gautier  was  a  poet,  and  if  I  bring  that 
coal  to  Newcastle  it  is  only  that  with  it 

[14] 


Introduction 

I  may  note  that  a  poet  is  not  a  human 
being.  I  lived  with  one  once — but  not 
twice.  There  are  towers  of  jade  to 
which  the  muse  may  come  but  from 
which  sanity  departs.  Gautier's  en- 
thusiasms were  very  violent.  They 
were  splendid,  lavish  and  noisy.  He 
too  had  a  palette.  On  Barbey's  piano 
there  was  ink  of  every  color.  Gautier 
used  but  one.  It  was  gold.  But  was 
it  with  ink  that  he  wrote?  The  first 
Francis  of  France  wrote  with  a  dia- 
mond, which  is  the  proper  pen  for  a 
sovereign.  In  the  Emaux  et  Camees 
Gautier  commends  a  humming-bird's 
feather.  I  doubt  that  he  ever  tried  one 
but  I  suspect  that,  drunk  every  morn- 
ing, as  a  poet  should  be,  with  the  nectar 
he  had  sipped  in  dream,  he  kept  a  cup 
of  it  before  him.  What  Barbey's  brew 
was,  Saint-Victor  has  told. 

[15] 


Introduction 

There  is  a  deeper  antithesis.     Gautier 
was  pagan.     Before  him  was  the  joy  of 
Hfe.     Barbey  was  a  CathoHc.     Behind 
him  was  the  fear  of  hell.     Gautier  went 
to   Spain    and   afterward   wrote   about 
Russia.     Whether  he  went  there  is  un- 
certain.    He   said   he   had   and   he   be- 
lieved it.     Huysmans  passed  an  evening 
at  Henry's  bar — around  the  corner  from 
the  rue  de  la  Paix — and  believed  he  had 
been  in  London.     But  if  Gautier  omitted 
to  go  to*  Russia,  he   made  himself  at 
home  in  the  Pays  des  songes.     Barbey 
followed  him  to  that  realm,  strange  and 
unique,  which  all  of  us  interpret  tem- 
peramentally and  which  each  must  visit 
alone.     Back  of  the  doors  that  close  be- 
hind our  birth  crouch  shapes  beautiful 
or  diabolic,  shapes  fashioned  perhaps  in 
our    anterior    lives..     In    the    land    of 
dreams  they  greet  us.     Occultists  say 

[16] 


Introduction 

that  these  shapes  are  not  figments  of 
fancy  but  actual  entities  that  move  and 
have  their  being  as,  in  the  gulfs  of  sleep, 
many  of  us  do  move  and  have  our  being, 
on  another  plane.  It  is  hazardous  to 
argue  with  an  occultist.  The  only  safe 
way  is  to  agree.  But  real  or  unreal,  the 
shapes  that  Gautier  met  had  mouths  of 
many  tunes.  Apart  from  inflammatory 
duchesses,  those  that  Barbey  saw  were 
silent.  They  came  clad  in  grey  or  else 
blood-red,  with  faces  cicatrised  and 
ashen.  They  fed  him  sorrow  with  a 
long  spoon.  They  fed  him  horror  also. 
I  think  he  enjoyed  it.  Madmen  have 
a  point  of  view  that  interests  them  and 
which,  I  am  sure,  is  very  enviable. 
Barbey'o  enjoyment  induced  anthropo- 
phobia  which,  in  his  case,  was  not  an 
aversion  to  humanity  but  a  desire  to  be 
undisturbed   at    his    piano,  alone   with 

[17] 


Introduction 

the  hypnogogic  hallucinations  that  it 
evoked. 

At  the  time,  he  too  had  had  his  hour. 
In  age  he  resembled  Dante,  not  phys- 
ically merely,  but  figuratively.  He  also 
had  been  in  hell.  But  in  his  youth  he 
stood  for  Balzac's  portrait  of  Lucien  de 
Rubempre.  Fame  ogled  Lucien  and 
the  hussy  made  eyes  at  Barbey.  On  the 
boulevards  he  was  Somebody.  As  he 
passed  before  the  terraced  cafes,  you 
knew  it.  "Regarde  un  peu!  C'est  Bar- 
bey d'Aurevilly!" 

He  was  worth  it.  If  you  had  not 
known  better  you  would  have  said: 
''Mais  non,  c'est  d'Orsay!"  The  same 
air,  if  you  please :  the  same  costume ;  the 
blue  coat,  high-collared,  gold-buttoned, 
short-waisted,  long-tailed:  the  skin- 
tight trousers;  the  curled-brim  beaver; 

the  jeweled  cane,  the  jeweled  snuff-box, 

[18] 


Introduction 

the  fob,  the  neckcloth,  that  air! — and 
the  insolence  on  the  tip  of  the  tongue. 
Not  so  long  ago,  either.  I  saw  him  at  a 
moment  when,  just  across  the  Channel, 
there  were  Gaiety  Girls,  a  gardenia  in 
your  buttonhole  and  the  inflated  pro- 
prieties of  the  Victorian  regime. 

In  that  fashion  he  promenaded,  al- 
ways alone.  Meanwhile  something  had 
happened.  It  is  said  that  in  the  temple 
of  Zeus  Lycasos,  men  lost  their  shadow, 
their  future  as  well.  Villiers  may  have 
ventured  there.  He  disappeared.  He 
was  gone  for  years,  though  where  no 
one  knew.  Barbey  also  executed  a 
fugue,  perhaps  to  the  Cevennes,  where 
this  horrible  story,  the  Story  without 
a  Smile,  occurred.  But  meanwhile 
something  had  happened,  some  incident 
that  contrived  to  be  catastrophic.  It 
drove  him  away,  not  omitting  to  put  a 

[19] 


Introduction 

mark  on  him  and  more  profoundly  than 
Brummel — whom  he  had  known — put 
another.  It  made  him  seek  what  the 
soHtary  ever  do  seek,  obscurity.  He 
courted  it,  as  imbeciles  court  fame. 
Thereafter  it  was  only  at  his  garret  in 
the  rue  Rousselet — a  garret  furnished, 
I  was  told,  in  buhl  and  ormulu,  the 
rickety  remnants  of  early  ease — it  was 
only  there  that  fame  presumed  to 
knock. 

At  Caen,  when  Brummel  enter- 
tained, his  servant  bawled:  "The 
Duchess  of  Devonshire!  His  royal 
highness,  the  Regent!  My  lord  Avan- 
ly!"  To  the  phantom  guests  Brum- 
mel bowed,  aired  his  wit.  Barbey 
had  no  servant.  It  was  he  who 
opened  the  door  and  to  guests  nobler 
than  those  that  appeared  at  Caen. 
Fame  came  and  with  her  Love,  sister 

[20] 


Introduction 

visions,  indistinguishably  fair,  indis- 
tinguishably  false.  On  the  threshold, 
with  lips  that  said,  Drink  me!  with  arms 
that  cried.  Take  us!  before  him  they 
stood.  The  door  closed  on  them.  Bar- 
bey  was  back  at  his  piano,  disdainful 
of  either,  indifferent  to  both,  a  host  still, 
but  the  host  of  wraiths  brain-created 
and  not  desire-born. 

Gautier  had  a  ballet  in  his  mind.  Bar- 
bey  a  morgue.  Of  the  two,  I  like  Bar-, 
bey  best,  not  because  he  is  superior — he 
is  not — but  because  affection  does  not 
always  go  with  the  river.  Besides,  it 
is  easy  enough  to  like  an  author  whom 
you  have  read,  though,  by  the  same 
token,  it  is  easier  still  to  loathe  him. 
Georges  Ohnet  makes  me  vomit. 

Gautier    had    two    daughters.     One 

married    Catulle    Mendes;    the    other, 

Emile  Bergerat.     Mendes  wrote  a  hun- 

[21] 


Introduction 

dred  novels  and  not  a  single  book.  Ber- 
gerat  wrote  one  book,  and  if  you  can 
obtain  a  copy,  you  will  get  glimmers  of 
the  charm  made  man  which  Gautier 
was. 

Barbey  had  daughters  also,  daughters 
of  dream,  born  on  a  piano  which  was 
a  palette.  Nowadays,  like  Bergerat's 
book,  they  are  mainly  o.  p.  Books  have 
their  destinies,  ^schylus  dedicated 
his  tragedies  to  Time.  Time,  always 
the  gentleman,  acknowledged  the  com- 
pliment by  storing  in  camphor  as  many 
of  them  as  the  fates  and  the  fathers 
allowed.  Barbey,  more  subtly,  I  think, 
dedicated  his  wares  to  Art.  Time 
passes,  nations  crumble,  only  art  sur- 
vives. There  are  sunetoi  who  still 
swear  by  ^schylus.  His  sublimity  is 
too  antique  for  me.  But  I  can  and  do 
admire  Barbey,  whose  art,   which  en- 

[22] 


Introduction 

dures,  has  in  it  the  malignity  of  the 
gargoyles  of  Notre  Dame — monsters 
leaning  from  the  turrets  that  they  may 
mark  across  the  ages  the  sameness  of 
the  joys  and  griefs  of  man.  What  but 
monsters  could  be  compelled  to  do  that? 
Barbey  created  a  brood  that  differs 
from  the  griffons  and  chimeras  of  Our 
Lady,  yet  only  in  this,  the  litter  is  alive 
and  therefore  more  horrible. 

The  effect,  very  comforting  in  itself^ 
achieved  its  purpose.  Popularity  never 
annoyed  him,  fame  he  let  pass  by. 
Gautier's  karma  was  fairer — or  more 
vulgar,  according  to  the  point  of  view. 
He  was  the  torch  of  an  epoch  of  which 
Barbey  is  now  the  ghost. 

Edgar  Saltus. 

New  York,  February,  ipip. 


[23] 


THE 
STORY  WITHOUT  A  NAME 


The 
Story  Without  a  Name 


ONE  day  just  prior  to  the  French 
Revolution,  in  a  village  at  the  foot 
of  the  Cevennes,  between  vespers  and 
evening  service,  a  Capuchin  was 
preaching.  The  church  was  dim,  and 
the  dimness  was  heightened  by  the 
mountains  that  surrounded  it,  which 
embraced  it,  and  which  about  the 
ulterior  houses  rose  sheerly  into  space. 
The  descent  was  a  circular  pathway 
twisted  like  a  corkscrew.  The  moun- 
tains were  very  green ;  there  were  rush- 

[27] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

ing  streams,  and  silver  bubbles,  and 
trout  so  plentiful  that  you  could  catch 
them  with  the  hand;  but  in  regard  to 
situation  no  village  v^as  ever  more 
desolately  placed. 

A  man's  birthplace  is  like  his  mother, 
he  is  supposed  to  love  her  whether  she 
is  worthy  or  not.  Were  it  otherwise, 
human  beings  to  whom  the  open  is  a 
necessity  could  never  have  remained  in 
a  pit  such  as  that.  Merely  the  desire  to 
breathe  would  have  sent  them  over  the 
mountain  walls.  I  lived  there  nearly  a 
month;  during  that  time  I  was  like  a 
crushed  titan,  physically  overwhelmed 
by  the  impression  which  those  moun- 
tains gave.  Even  now,  in  thinking  of 
them,  I  feel  their  weight  on  my  heart. 
The  inhabitants  reminded  me  of  miners 
living  in  the  under-earth,  and  again  of 
those  captives  of  earlier  cloisters  who 

[28] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

prayed,  year  in,  year  out,  forgotten  in 
shadowy  crypts. 

As  for  the  village,  I  might  compare 
it  to  a  pen-sketch  in  China  ink,  a  collec- 
tion of  old  houses  blackened  by  age. 
But  it  possessed  a  peculiarity  of  its  own, 
the  blackness  became  blacker,  a  black 
on  black,  one  which  the  perpendicular 
shadows  of  the  enveloping  heights  in- 
creased. It  resembled  nothing  so  much 
as  a  prison  where  light  never  enters, 
where  the  walls  are  too  steep  for  the 
sun  to  scale.  Sometimes  at  high  noon 
I  could  not  catch  a  glimpse  of  day.  It 
is  a  place  where  Byron  should  have  writ- 
ten his  Darkness;  it  is  a  place  where 
Rembrandt  might  have  created  that  ef- 
fect of  his,  the  absence  of  light,  or  rather 
it  is  there  he  could  have  found  it. 

In  summer,  when  the  inhabitants  look 
up  at  the  blue  garret  window  that  hangs 

[29] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

a  thousand  feet  above  them,  they  are  not 
wholly  sure  whether  the  day  is  fair  or 
not.  On  this  particular  day,  however, 
the  window  was  not  blue;  it  was  gray. 
Clouds  had  closed  the  aperture.  The 
bottle  was  corked. 

The  entire  population  was  then  at 
church,  an  austere  edifice,  built  in  the 
the  thirteenth  century,  in  which — the 
sombre  twilight  aiding — not  even  lynx 
eyes,  had  there  been  any,  could  have 
read  a  word  from  the  prayers.  As  is 
customary,  the  candles  had  been  extin- 
guished at  the  beginning  of  the  sermon, 
and  the  congregation,  huddled  together 
like  tiles  on  a  roof,  were  as  invisible  to 
the  preacher  as  he,  separated  and  afar  in 
the  pulpit,  was  invisible  to  them.  But 
though  they  could  not  see  very  clearly, 
at  least  they  could  hear.  It  is  only  in 
the  choir,  runs  the  proverb,  that  Cap- 

[30] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

uchins  talk  through  the  nose.  The  Cap- 
uchin who  was  preaching  then  had  a 
voice  which  was  not  alone  vibrant,  but 
resonant  enough  to  announce  the  most 
terrible  dogmas  of  the  Church.  He  was 
then  announcing  them.  He  was  preach- 
ing of  hell. 

Everything  about  the  church,  the 
severity  of  the  style,  the  approach  of 
night  that  entered  in  waves,  profounder 
and  more  insistent  each  moment,  lent 
to  the  speech  of  the  speaker  an  extraor- 
dinary relief.  The  statues  of  the 
saints,  veiled  in  the  draperies  with 
which  they  are  covered  during  Lent, 
were  like  mysterious  phantoms,  motion- 
less in  their  niches;  and  the  preacher, 
whose  indistinct  silhouette  swayed 
across  the  white  column  against  which 
the  pulpit  leaned,  seemed  a  phantom 
also.     You  would  have  said,  a  specter 

[31] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

preaching  to  ghosts.  Even  the  thunder 
of  his  voice,  powerful  in  its  actuality 
though  it  w^as,  and  yet  which  appeared 
to  belong  to  no  one,  seemed  to  fall  from 
above. 

The  impression  of  it  all  was  so  thrill- 
ing, the  attention  so  great,  the  silence 
so  absolute,  that  when,  for  a  moment,  he 
stopped  to  draw  breath  you  heard  from 
without  the  sob  of  rillets  trickling  along 
the  mountain-sides,  adding  to  the  melan- 
choly of  shadows  the  malancholy  of 
waters  displaced. 

The  eloquence  which  the  preacher 
displayed  must  surely  have  been  height- 
ened by  the  ambient  influences  that  I 
have  described.  In  listening  to  it  every 
ear  was  turned,  every  head  was  bowed, 
save  two,  the  heads  of  a  mother  and 
daughter.  That  evening,  after  the  ser- 
mon, the  preacher  was  to  sup  with  them ; 

[32] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

they  were  curious  to  see  him,  and  they 
bent  forward  in  an  effort  to  catch 
a  glimpse  of  their  guest,  lost  in  the 
penumbra  of  the  arch. 

It  may  be  remembered  that,  in  those 
days,  strangers,  members  of  some 
distant  order,  preached  during  Lent 
throughout  the  parishes  of  France. 
These  wandering  servants  of  God,  the 
people,  with  the  unconscious  poetry 
which  is  theirs,  called  the  Swallows  of 
Lent.  And  when  one  of  them  alighted 
in  hamlet  or  city  a  nest  was  made  for 
him  in  the  foremost  mansion  of  the 
place,  a  form  of  hospitality  which  rich 
and  religious  households  gratefully  dis- 
pensed, and  which,  in  the  provinces 
where  life  is  monotonous,  lent  a  peculiar 
interest  to  the  preacher,  who  each  year 
brought  with  him  that  aroma  of  the 
unknown   and   the  faraway  which   the 

[33] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

isolated  love  to  inhale.  The  most  rapid 
seductions  that  the  chronicles  of  love 
recount  are  those  accomplished  by- 
travelers  who  have  merely  passed,  and 
of  whom  that  passing  constituted  the 
unique  attraction. 

The  monk  who  was  fulminating  then 
on  the  terrors  of  hell  hardly  seemed  apt 
to  sow  anything  else  than  the  fear  of 
God.  And  as  he  fulminated  he  did  not 
know,  nor  did  the  two  women  who  were 
trying  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  him  know, 
that  the  hell  he  preached  he  was  to  leave 
in  their  hearts. 

But  that  evening  as  they  left  the 
church,  their  pardonable  if  provincial 
curiosity  was  unsatisfied.  They  had 
not  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  terrible 
preacher  of  a,  terrible  creed;  and  con- 
cerning him  they  had  no  remarks  to 
make,     except     regarding    his    ability, 

[341 


The  Story  Witliout  a  Name 

which  seemed  to  them  very  great.     As 
they  wrapped  themselves  in  their  furs, 
they  told  each  other  that  they  had  never 
heard    a    better    sermon.     Both    were 
fervent  believers,  and  both,  according  to 
the    sacramental    expression,    pious    as 
saints.     They  were  called  the  Ladies  de 
Ferjol.     That    evening    they    returned 
home  quite  animated.     Heretofore,  dur- 
ing Lent,  they  had  seen  and  entertained 
many  a  preacher;  there  had  been  Pre- 
montres,  Genovefains,  Dominicans,  and 
Eudists,  but  a  Capuchin  never.     No  one 
of  that  mendicant  order  of  St.  Francis, 
of  which  the  costume — and  costumes  al- 
ways more  or  less  preoccupy  women — 
is  so  poetic  and  picturesque,  had  ever 
passed  that  way.     Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who 
had  traveled,  had  seen  it  before;  but  her 
daughter,  who  was  only  sixteen,  knew 
no  other  Capuchin  than  the  one  which 

[35] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

on  the  corner  of  the  mantel  in  the  din- 
ing-room served  as  barometer — the 
charming,  old  -  fashioned  barometer, 
which,  like  so  many  other  charming 
things,  exists  no  more. 

The  monk  who  presently  caused  him- 
self to  be  announced,  and  who  then  en- 
tered the  room  where  the  ladies  awaited 
him,  did  not  in  the  least  resemble  the 
Capuchin  that  hooded  himself  in  stormy 
weather  and  unhooded  himself  in  fair. 
He  was  of  a  different  type  from  the  one 
invented  by  the  charming  imagination 
of  our  fathers. 

In  the  France  of  olden  time,  even  in 
days  of  faith,  there  was  much  hilarity 
over  both  priest  and  monk,  but  espe- 
cially over  the  latter.  Later,  in  a  less 
fervent  epoch,  the  wicked  and  witty 
regent  who  laughed  at  everything  said 
to  a  Capuchin  who  called  himself  un- 

[36] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

worthy  of  his  calling,  "But  what  the 
deuce  are  you  worthy  of  if  you  are  not 
worthy  of  being  a  Capuchin?"  The 
eighteenth  century,  which  disdained  his- 
tory, as  Mirabeau  did,  a  disdain  that  his- 
tory will  repay  as  it  has  already  repaid 
Mirabeau,  forgot  that  Charles  V  had 
been  a  Capuchin,  and  during  its  entire 
span  covered  the  order  with  ridicule  and 
epigram. 

The  Capuchin  who  appeared  that 
evening  before  the  Ladies  de  Ferjol  was 
manifestly  not  made  for  either  ridicule 
or  epigram.  He  was  about  thirty:  tall, 
robust,  imposing.  He  wore  a  short 
beard  curled  like  that  of  Hercules, 
rather  dark,  the  color  of  bronze.  The 
world  admires  pride,  and  his  expression, 
which  asked  no  indulgence  because  of 
his  cloth,  had  in  it  nothing  of  the  volun- 
tary humility  of  his  order.     Neither  had 

[37] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

his  attitude.  Merely  in  stretching  his 
hand  he  had  the  air  of  one  commandine: 
respect.  And  what  a  hand  it  was! — a 
hand  so  superb  that  the  whiteness  of  it, 
issuing  from  the  wide  sleeve,  startled; 
a  hand  royally  beautiful  that  stretched 
imperially  for  alms. 

As  is  customary  in  the  homes  of  the 
devout,  the  servant,  Agathe  Thousard 
by  name,  had  already  given  him  water 
for  the  feet,  and  they  now  shone  in  their 
sandals  like  marble,  sculptured  by  Phid- 
ias. To  the  ladies  he  bowed  very  dis- 
tantly, after  the  Oriental  fashion,  the 
arms  crossed  on  the  breast,  and  as  he 
bowed,  no  one,  not  even  Voltaire,  would 
have  jested  at  him.  The  red  buttons  of 
the  Cardinalate  were  never  to  star  his 
robe,  but  he  looked  worthy  to  bear  them  ; 
and  as  the  ladies  curtsied  it  occurred 
to  them  that   the  voice   that   they  had 

[38] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

heard  falling  from  the  pulpit  through 
the  increasing  shadows  of  night  was 
exactly  suited  to  the  man. 

It  being  Lent,  and  this  priest  of  ab- 
stinence having  come  to  represent  and 
preach  it,  they  offered  him  the  usual 
Lenten  repast,  string-beans  cooked  in 
oil,  celery  salad,  beets  mixed  with  an- 
chovies, tunny-fish,  and  stewed  oysters. 
Therewith  was  a  bottle  of  Chateau  du 
Pape,  but  that,  though  it  was  a  Catholic 
wine,  he  refused.  Of  the  food,  however, 
he  ate  heartily,  and  to  his  hostesses  he 
seemed,  while  devoid  of  affectation,  fully 
possessed  of  the  dignity  and  severity  of 
his  cloth.  The  hood,  which  on  entering 
the  room  he  threw  back  on  his  shoulders, 
disclosed  a  neck  that  might  have  be- 
longed to  a  Roman  proconsul,  and  an 
enormous  cranium  polished  as  a  mirror 
and  circled  with  a  coronet  of  hair,  which 

[39] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

was  bronzed  like  his  beard,  and  curled 
as  it. 

The  members  of  his  order,  who  are 
mendicants  in  the  name  of  Christ,  are 
never  anywhere  out  of  place,  religion 
having  placed  them  on  a  footing  of 
equality  with  the  notables  of  the  earth, 
and  his  manner  was  that  of  one  accus- 
tomed to  the  best  society.  In  spite  of 
this  he  was  not  sympathetic  to  either  of 
his  hostesses.  To  their  thinking  he  was 
lacking  in  the  affable  simplicity  which 
other  priests  who  had  been  their  guests 
had  displayed.  He  was  imposing,  and 
yet  he  indisposed.  He  made  them  un- 
comfortable, ill  at  ease,  though  how  or 
why  they  were  unable  to  decide.  In 
the  chill  of  his  eyes,  in  the  expression 
of  his  mouth,  there  was  an  audacity 
startling    and    significant.     He    looked 

[40] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

like  a  man  of  whom  you  say:     He  is 
capable  of  anything. 

One  evening,  when  a  sort  of  familiar- 
ity had  sprung  up  between  him  and  the 
gentlewomen,  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who  had 
been  scrutinizing  him  from  beneath  the 
shade  of  the  lamp,  murmured,  reflec- 
tively: 

"Father,  I  wonder  what  you  would  be 
if  you  were  not  a  priest?" 

Apparently  the  remark  amused  him. 
He  smiled,  but  what  a  smile !  Mme.  de 
Ferjol  never  forgot  it,  and  later,  it 
stabbed  her  heart  with  a  horrible  con- 
viction. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  physiognomy 
was  little  in  harmony  with  the  humility 
of  his  calling,  yet  during  the  forty  days 
which  he  passed  in  the  house,  and  in 
spite,  too,  of  the  remark  that  involun- 

[41]       . 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

tarily  had  escaped  her,  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
had  not  a  fault  to  find  with  him.  In 
speech,  in  bearing,  in  everything-,  he  was 
irreproachable. 

"He  would  be  better  off  in  La  Trappe 
than  in  a  monastery,"  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
said  to  her  daughter  when  they  were 
alone,  and  the  conversation  turned  on 
the  monk  and  the  audacity  of  his  ex- 
pression. For  La  Trappe,  because  of 
the  silence  which  is  observed  there,  and 
the  severity  of  its  regulations,  is,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  world,  particularly 
adapted  to  those  who  have  a  crime  to 
expiate. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  gifted  with  great 
penetration,  and  although  for  years  she 
had  been  highly  devout,  yet  the  benev- 
olence that  religion  inculcates  in  no  wise 
prevented  her  from  exercising  her  pene- 
tration, which,  parenthetically,  was  that 
.        [42] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

of  a  woman  of  the  world.  She  was  in- 
telligent, quite  able  to  appreciate  the 
eloquence  which  Father  Riculf  dis- 
played— a  mediaeval  name  that  fitted 
him  perfectly ;  and  yet  the  eloquence  at- 
tracted her  as  little  as  did  the  man.  It 
was  the  same  way  with  her  daughter, 
whom  that  eloquence  frightened. 

To  the  two  gentlewomen  the  elo- 
quence and  the  man  were  equally  dis- 
tasteful, so  much  so  even  that  they  did 
not  confess  to  him.  The  other  women 
of  the  village  fairly  doted  on  him,  and 
during  the  entire  time  that  he  was 
among  them  his  confessional  was 
thronged.  His  hostesses  were  the  only 
ones  who  remained  away,  an  abstention 
that  surprised  their  neighbors.  But  at 
church,  as  at  home,  these  ladies  seemed 
to  have  discovered  about  him  a  mys- 
terious   and    isolating    circle,    and    at 

[43] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

the    circumference    of   that    circle    they 
stopped. 

It  may  be,  through  the  intuition 
which  we  all  possess,  they  divined  that 
he  was  inimical  to  their  happiness. 


44 


II 


THE  Baroness  de  Ferjol  cared  little 
for  the  hamlet  in  which  she  lived. 
She  was  born  elsewhere,  in  Normandy, 
and  her  parents  were  people  of  rank.  It 
was  her  marriage,  one  purely  of  love, 
that  had  thrown  her  in  what,  when 
thinking  of  the  horizons  and  luxuriant 
landscapes  of  her  birthplace,  she  dis- 
dainfully described  as  an  ant-hole.  The 
man  she  loved  had  brought  her  there, 
and  for  years  that  love  had  moved  the 
mountains  back  and  bathed  the  valley 
with  increasing  light. 

Born  Jacqueline  -  Marie  -  Louise 
d'Olonde,  she  had  been  captivated  by 
the  baron,  then  a  captain  of  an  infantry 

[45] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

regiment  which,  during  the  last  years 
of  the  reign  of  Louis  XVI,  was  quar- 
tered at  St.  Sauveur  as  a  guard  against 
a  possible  attack  by  the  English.  The 
camp  was  but  a  small  one,  and  those 
who  saw  it  are  dead  long  since.  My 
grandmother  was  one  of  the  latter;  its 
officers  she  had  sumptuously  enter- 
tained, and  during  my  childhood  she 
often  spoke  of  the  camp  with  that  ac- 
cent old  people  have  when  speaking  of 
things  they  have  seen. 

The  Baron  de  Ferjol  she  had  known 
very  well.  He  had  danced  with  Mile. 
d'Olonde  in  the  best  houses  of  St.  Sau- 
veur at  a  time  when  there  was  much 
dancing  going  on,  and  he  had  turned 
the  young  woman's  head  completely. 
He  was,  my  grandmother  declared, 
very  handsome.  He  wore  a  white  uni- 
form, with  collar  and  facings  of  blue. 

[46] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

He  was  fair,  moreover,  and  women 
think  that  blue  is  particularly  suited  to 
blonds. 

The  surprise  of  my  grandmother 
on  learning  that  he  had  turned  Mile. 
d'Olonde's  head  had  not  therefore  been 
very  great.  He  had  turned  it  so  com- 
pletely even,  that  the  young  woman, 
who  was  considered  pride  itself,  con- 
sented to  an  elopement. 

Mile.  d'Olonde  was  an  orphan.  The 
society  in  which  she  moved,  and  which 
to  this  day  has  changed  but  little,  was 
orderly,  moral,  religious,  Jansenist  even. 
As  a  consequence,  the  scandal  which  her 
elopement  created  was  terrific;  her 
guardians  had  no  choice;  they  consented 
to  her  marriage  with  the  baron,  who 
thereupon  took  her  away  to  the  Ce- 
vennes,  where  his  home  was. 

Unfortunately,  the  baron  died  young. 

[47] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

He  left  his  wife  in  the  depths  of  a  moun- 
tain funnel  which  he  had  widened  by  his 
presence  and  his  love,  and  of  which  the 
walls,  tightening  in  on  her,  threw  an- 
other black  veil  over  a  heart  already  in 
black.  With  a  courage  of  her  own  she 
remained  in  that  pit.  When  the  sky 
passed  from  her  heart  she  did  not  try 
to  ascend  the  suffocating  mountains  in 
an  effort  to  find  another  above  her  head. 
She  crouched  in  the  gulf  and  grief  of 
widowhood. 

For  a  moment  she  thought  of  return- 
ing to  Normandy,  but  the  memory  of 
her  elopement,  and  the  scorn  which 
might  be  her  greeting  prevented.  She 
had  no  wish  to  wound  her  wings  against 
casements  that  she  herself  had  broken. 
Practical,  as  every  Norman  is,  she  cared 
little  for  the  beauty  of  externals. 
Where  there  was  none,  its  absence  was 

[48] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

unnoticed.  There  was  nothing  dreamy 
about  her,  her  disposition  was  not  one 
to  be  affected  by  such  a  thing  as  home- 
sickness. By  nature  she  was  both  firm 
and  equable,  but  her  temperament  was 
ardent.  That  indeed  her  marriage  had 
only  too  clearly  shown. 

The  ardor,  however,  was  concen- 
trated, and  when  after  the  death  of  her 
husband  she  flung  herself  into  religion, 
suddenly  she  became  severe. 

The  melancholy  hamlet  in  which  she 
was  entombed  seemed  to  her  quite  as 
fit  to  live  in  as  to  die  in.  The  over- 
hanging mountains  that  shadowed  it 
suited  her  perfectly  well.  When  a  pic- 
ture is  dreary  the  frame  should  be  dark. 

At  the  age  of  forty  the  Baroness  de 
Ferjol  was  a  tall,  slim  brunette,  who 
seemed  interiorly  illuminated  by  an  un- 
seen fire,  one  that  burned  beneath  cin- 

[49] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

ders  in  the  marrow  of  her  bones. 
Women  admitted  that  formerly  she  had 
been  handsome — but  not  attractive, 
they  added,  with  that  pleasure  which 
such  attenuations  usually  procure.  But 
her  beauty,  that  had  been  disagreeable 
to  other  women  merely  because  it  was 
overwhelming,  was  buried  with  the  man 
she  had  loved.  When  he  died  she 
ceased  to  think  of  it.  He  was  the  one 
mirror  in  which  she  had  admired  her- 
self, and  in  losing  him  who  had  been 
to  her  the  universe,  she  reconveyed  the 
ardor  of  her  love  to  her  child.  But  the 
modesty  which  ardent  temperaments 
frequently  possess  had  prevented  her 
from  displaying  to  her  husband  the  vio- 
lence of  the  passion  which  he  had 
aroused;  and  in  the  same  manner  she 
concealed  her  affection  from  her  child, 
whom  she  loved  more  because  she  was 

[50] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

the  child  of  her  husband  than  because 
she  was  her  own;  in  fact,  because  even 
in  maternity  she  was  more  wife  than 
mother. 

With  perfect  unconsciousness  and 
with  an  entire  absence  of  affectation, 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  exhibited  to  her  daugh- 
ter, and  for  that  matter  to  everyone 
else,  a  sort  of  rigid  majesty,  which  her 
daughter,  as  everyone  else,  was  forced 
to  endure.  When  you  saw  her,  the  un- 
sympathetic ascendancy  which  she  pos- 
sessed was  instantly  understood.  Her 
figure,  which  was  that  of  a  matron;  her 
proud  and  chiseled  features;  the  black 
coils  of  her  hair,  which  on  the  temples 
were  nearly  white,  rendering  them  aus- 
terer  and  almost  cruel,  and  which  in 
their  unpitying  gray  seemed  to  have 
claws  to  cling  with  and  rest  there  among 
the  resisting  coils  of  black — in  all  this 

[51] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

there  was  something  too  imperious,  too 
despotic,  too  Roman  for  her  to  have 
been  otherwise  than  as  she  was.  The 
sight  of  her  was  enough  to  draw  an  ex- 
clamation from  the  most  ordinary  ob- 
server, but  to  a  painter  or  a  poet  that 
wan  widow  would  have  recalled  the 
mother  of  Spartacus  or  the  mother  of 
Coriolanus.  And — mark  the  stupidity 
of  fate! — the  woman  who  possessed  this 
energetic  and  desolate  appearance,  who 
seemed  created  to  tame  the  haughtiest 
of  rebels,  and  in  the  name  of  their 
fathers  command  heroes  at  war,  had 
absolutely  nothing  to  do  save  educate 
and  bring  up  a  poor  little  innocent  girl. 
There  was  indeed  nothing  more  in- 
nocent, nothing  more  girlish,  than 
Lasthenie  de  Ferjol.  She  was  then  just 
emerging  from  childhood.  All  her  life 
she   had   lived   in   the   hamlet,   without 

[52] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

leaving  its  sunless  humidity  once.  She 
was  the  lily  of  the  valley,  the  lily  that 
loves  the  shadov^s,  and  grows  best  in 
the  corners  of  garden  walls  where  the 
sun  never  shines.  Lasthenie  had  all  the 
purity  of  that  white  flower,  and  some- 
thing of  its  mystery  also.  In  character 
and  physiognomy  she  differed  entirely 
from  her  mother.  On  seeing  her  you 
wondered  that  such  fragility  could  come 
from  such  force.  Her  face  was  one  that 
the  world  considered  pretty  rather  than 
beautiful,  a  subject  of  which  the  world 
knows  nothing;  she  was  slim-waisted 
and  for  her  age  well  developed,  a  com- 
bination noticeable  in  accomplished 
women.  Her  hair  was  as  fair  as  her 
father's — the  ideal  baron  who  after  a 
fashion  of  the  hour  sometimes  put  pink 
powder  in  his  own — a  little  eccentricity 
that  afterwards,  at  the  beginning  of  the 

[53] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

present  century,  the  Abbe  Delille,  in 
spite  of  his  ugliness,  which  was  atro- 
cious, adopted  for  himself.  But  Lasthe- 
nie  had  no  other  powder  than  that  which 
is  natural  to  the  plumage  of  the  mel- 
ancholy and  tender  dove.  Beneath  her 
hair,  her  eyes,  framed  in  the  dead-white 
of  her  skin,  shone  as  large  and  as  bril- 
liant as  certain  mirrors.,  which,  because 
perhaps  of  their  depth  and  purity,  re- 
flect a  shimmer  of  green.  And  these 
eyes,  pale  gray-green — the  color  of  the 
leaf  of  the  willow,  lover  of  the  waters 
— were  veiled  with  long,  dark,  gold 
lashes,  that  rested  wearily  on  the  por- 
celain of  her  cheek.  Everything  about 
her  resembled  them.  The  languor  of 
her  bearing  was  the  languor  of  those 
lashes.  In  my  life  I  have  known  but 
one  person  who  possessed  that  languid 
charm,   and   never   shall   I   forget   her. 

[54] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

She  limped,  and  divinely.  Lasthenie 
did  not  limp,  but  she  seemed  to.  She 
had  the  fascination  of  women  who  do 
limp  slightly,  and  whose  limp  sways 
the  gown  with  adorable  undulations. 
Briefly,  then,  in  all  her  being  she  exhaled 
that  heavenly  weakness  before  which 
men  of  strength  and  heart  bend  the 
knee. 

She  loved  her  mother,  but  she  feared 
her.  She  loved  her  as  certain  believers 
love  God,  tremblingly.  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
had  never  shown,  and  never  could  show, 
that  abandonment  of  confidence  which 
mothers  whose  tenderness  overflows  in- 
spire in  their  children.  And  with  this 
mother,  imposing  and  mournful,  who 
seemed  to  live  in  and  share  the  silence 
of  her  husband's  tomb,  unrestraint  and 
confidence  were  impossible. 

And  so  it  came  about  that  Lasthenie, 

[55] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

thus  repelled,  lost  herself  in  dream;  and 
in  the  depths  of  a  cup  whose  rim  was  a 
mountain-chain,  she  lived,  deluged  with 
shadows,  alone  with  thoughts  which, 
unlike  the  mountain-chain,  had  no  zig- 
zag path  whereby  an  ascent  could  have 
been  effected. 

She  hid  her  thoughts  and  feelings,  and 
yet  she  was  artless,  though  to  have 
found  that  artlessness  you  would  have 
had  to  seek  it  among  the  wellsprings  of 
her  being,  where  it  bubbled  as  water 
bubbles  when  a  hand  is  plunged  beneath 
the  surface.  No  one  had  ever  thought 
of  plunging  into  Lasthenie's  soul.  Her 
mother  adored  her,  the  more  perhaps 
because  she  resembled  the  man  whom 
she  had  so  wholly  loved.  She  enjoyed 
her  in  silence,  she  feasted  on  her  with- 
out saying  a  word.  Had  her  piety  been 
a  little  less  fervent,  a  trifle  less  rigid, 

[56] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

she  would  have  eaten  her  up  with  kisses, 
and  in  the  warmth  of  caresses  a  heart 
naturally  timid  might  have  unfolded 
like  a  bud.  But  in  restraining  herself, 
she  restrained  her  daughter.  She  held 
her  hand  like  a  wall  against  the  source 
of  those  sentiments  that  seek  their  rest 
in  a  mother's  heart,  and  which,  not  find- 
ing it,  flow  back. 

To  our  own  misfortune  the  law  which 
governs  hearts  is  crueller  than  the  law 
that  governs  things.  Once  the  hand 
that  made  the  wall  and  opposed  the  ex- 
pansion is  withdrawn,  the  source,  freed 
from  the  obstacle,  begins  to  flow  anew, 
more  impetuously  than  before;  but  to 
the  heart  there  always  comes  a  moment 
when  sentiments  absorb  themselves  and 
disappear,  just  as  blood  in  mortal 
wounds  ceases  to  flow  through  the  open 
flesh.     And  even   then  blood  can  still 

[57] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

be  drawn,  while  sentiments  too  long  re- 
strained coagulate. 

In  this  manner,  although  mother  and 
daughter  had  never  been  separated,  al- 
though in  the  little  details  of  life  they 
always  acted  in  concert,  and  although 
they  loved  each  other  dearly,  they  were 
alone,  isolated  in  an  isolation  shared 
jointly.  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who  was 
strong  by  nature,  and  who  in  the  hallu- 
cinations of  memory  had  ever  before  her 
the  man  whom  she  had  loved  with  a  de- 
gree of  passion  that  seemed  culpable  to 
her  now,  felt  the  isolation  less  than 
Lasthenie. 

With  Lasthenie  it  was  different.  She 
had  no  past.  Her  dormant  faculties 
were  about  to  awake,  and  the  isolation 
made  her  suffer — vaguely,  it  is  true,  and 
more  as  an  indisposition  might  than  ac- 
tual pain.     Yet  that  was  because  every- 

[58] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

thing  within  her  still  was  vague.  Then, 
too,  from  the  cradle  up  to  the  present 
hour  of  her  life,  more  or  less  she  had  al- 
ways suffered.  The  misery  of  life  con- 
sists in  becoming  accustomed  to  certain 
things.  And  Lasthenie  had  become  as 
accustomed  to  the  melancholy  of  her  iso- 
lated childhood  as  she  had  to  the  melan- 
choly of  the  land  in  which  she  was  born, 
one  which  dropped  upon  her  its  pitiful 
ray  of  Hght,  and  shut  out  the  horizon 
with  its  mountainous  walls.  She  had 
become  accustomed  to  these  things  just 
as  she  had  become  accustomed  to  the 
melancholy  solitude  of  her  home.  For 
her  mother,  who  was  rich,  and  belonged 
to  an  epoch  in  which  classes  that  were 
to  disappear  had  not  yet  ceased  to  exist, 
saw  very  Httle  of  the  hamlet,  where,  so 
far  as  society  went,  there  was  really 
nothing  for  a  woman  like  herself. 

[59] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

When  she  had  come  there  with  her 
husband,  she  was  so  intoxicated  with 
happiness  that  she  would  not  have 
stirred  for  the  world.  It  seemed  to  her 
then  that  some  of  the  happiness  would 
be  taken  from  her,  that  it  would  be  pro- 
faned, did  she  permit  herself  to  be 
drawn  into  contact  with  others.  And 
when  that  happiness  passed  with  the 
passing  of  the  man  whom  she  adored, 
she  asked  consolation  of  no  one.  She 
lived  alone  without  manifesting  any  af- 
fectation of  solitude  or  of  grief;  civil  to 
everyone,  but  civil  with  that  chill  which 
dismisses  without  appeal,  yet  which  is 
without  harshness,  and  does  not  wound. 
The  little  hamlet  understood  it  per- 
fectly. Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  too  much 
above  the  common  run  for  anyone  to  be 
annoyed  at  an  attitude  which  the  death 

of  her  husband   sufficiently   explained. 

[60] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

It  was  taken  for  granted  that  she  lived 
only  for  her  daughter;  and,  knowing  the 
mother  to  be  rich,  the  possessor  of  a 
large  estate  in  Normandy,  it  was  ru- 
mored that  when  the  daughter  was  of 
marriageable  age  she  would  go  back 
with  her  to  where  her  estate  and  fortune 
were. 

In  the  neighborhood  there  were  no 
suitable  suitors  for  Mile,  de  Ferjol,  and 
in  the  event  of  marriage  no  one  believed 
that  Mme.  de  Ferjol  would  consent  to  a 
separation  from  a  daughter  from  whom 
she  had  never  separated,  and  whom, 
even  when  the  question  of  education 
arose,  she  had  not  permitted  to  enter  the 
convent  of  the  neighboring  town. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  attended  to  her  daugh- 
ter's education  herself.  She  taught  her 
all  she  knew,  which  was  little.  But  in 
those  days  the  instruction  of  young  girls 

[61] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

of  good  families  was  limited  to  noble 
sentiments  and  fine  manners,  with 
which  they  got  along  very  well.  Once 
in  society  they  divined  everything  with- 
out having  learned  a  thing.  Nowadays 
they  are  taught  everything,  and  under- 
stand nothing.  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  con- 
vinced that,  in  being  near  her,  Lasthe- 
nie  would  always  possess  the  sentiments 
and  the  manners  of  her  rank,  directed 
her  daughter's  attention  to  the  worship 
of  God.  Tender  by  nature,  endowed 
with  a  soul  that  was  tenderness  itself, 
Lasthenie  turned  to  religion  naturally. 
In  prayer  she  sought  to  express  those 
things  concerning  which  her  mother 
never  asked;  yet  in  the  confidences  she 
gave  to  an  altar  she  could  not  forget  the 
possibility  of  confiding  to  one  who  had 
suffered  her  to  make  no  confidences  at 
all.     And  it  was  perhaps  because  of  that 

[62] 


The  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

that  religion  failed  to  bring  her  the  de- 
light it  gives  to  those  that  have  unques- 
tioning faith.  There  w^as  in  her  some- 
thing more,  or  something  less,  than  that 
which  is  requisite  to  those  who  are 
happy  only  in  God  and  through  Him. 
She  filled  every  duty  of  a  Christian  with 
the  simplicity  of  perfect  faith;  she  fol- 
lowed her  mother  to  church,  with  her 
visited  the  poor,  partook  of  communion 
with  her;  and  yet  none  of  these  things 
placed  on  the  dead  white  of  her  fore- 
head the  ray  of  light  that  belongs  to 
youth. 

Disturbed  by  the  melancholy  which 
the  girl  exhibited,  and  which  in  view  of 
the  purity  of  her  life  seemed  inex- 
plicable, now  and  again  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
would  ask: 

"Is   it   because   you   are   not  fervent 

enough?" 

[63] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Instead  of  the  doubt  and  severity  of 
that  question,  if  the  mother  had  only 
taken  the  child  in  her  arms  and  let  her 
there  pour  out  all  that  was  in  her  mind, 
her  eyes,  and  heart,  it  would  have  been 
better  for  both  of  them.  But  that  she 
did  not  do;  she  resisted  even  the  tempta- 
tion; and  as  Lasthenie  knew  no  one  but 
her  mother,  there  was  no  one  in  whom 
she  could  confide.  Her  soul  was  suf- 
focating, and  at  the  time  when  this  story 
begins  the  pity  of  it  is  that  she  did  not 
die  of  that  suffocation. 


[64] 


Ill 


TEN  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Lent 
was  almost  over.  It  was  the  day 
before  Easter,  and  the  Ladies  de  Ferjol, 
after  assisting  at  the  service  and  the 
washing  of  the  altars,  had  returned  to 
their  home. 

The  house  was  in  the  center  of  a  little 
square  that  alone  separated  it  from  the 
church.  The  church  itself  was  of  the 
thirteenth  century;  its  frontal  was  Ro- 
manic, crushed  in,  so  to  speak,  and  with 
an  energy  that  recalled  the  barbarian 
who  flung  himself  fiat  on  his  face  before 
the  cross  of  our  Lord.  The  square 
was  paved  with  cat's-heads — triangular 
stones;  and  it  was  so  small  that  these 

[65] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

ladies,  who  haunted  the  church,  could, 
when  it  it  rained,  cross  without  an  um- 
brella. The  house  in  which  they  lived 
was  an  immense  edifice  of  no  particular 
style,  built  subsequent  to  the  church. 
The  ancestors  of  the  Baron  de  Ferjol 
had  occupied  it  for  generations,  and  as 
a  consequence  it  was  sadly  out  of  date. 
It  was  antique  and  uncomfortable,  one 
of  those  habitations  at  which  architects 
jeer,  and  the  possessors  decline  to  part 
with  unless  actual  want  compels.  The 
black  corners  of  dilapidated  homes 
where  perhaps  the  ghosts  of  progenitors 
crouch,  where  childhood  has  played  and 
age  has  come,  cry  out  against  such  sac- 
rilege. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who  was  born  else- 
where, might  have  readily  rid  herself  of 
the  building,  but  she  had  preferred  to 

keep  it.     There  were  the  traditions  of 

[66] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

her  husband's  family  to  be  respected, 
and  besides,  as  in  the  City  Celestial,  this 
gaunt,  gray,  haggard  house  held  for  her 
walls  of  gold,  walls  that  were  indestruct- 
ible, aglow  with  glitter,  built  by  Love  in 
days  of  Delight. 

It  was  with  the  idea  of  sheltering  the 
progeny,  in  whose  multiplication  our 
forefathers  took  a  religious  pride,  that 
the  vast  house  was  originally  built;  but 
now,  since  death  had  come,  and  its  sole 
occupants  were  two  women,  lost  in  its 
immensity,  it  seemed  vaster  than  before. 
It  was  cold,  too,  uninviting,  imposing 
indeed,  because  it  was  spacious,  and 
space  makes  a  house  magnificent  as  it 
does  a  landscape;  yet,  such  as  it  was,  it 
interested  everyone  that  visited  it.  The 
ceilings  were  remote,  the  corridors  in- 
tersected, and  it  had  a  stairway  steep  as 
the  stairs  of  a  clock  tower,  and  so  broad 

[67] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

that  fourteen  horses  could  mount  its 
hundred  steps  abreast,  a  feat  that  had 
been  accompHshed,  it  was  said,  during 
the  war  of  the  Chemises  Blanches  and 
Jean  Cavalier. 

This  gigantic  stairway  seemed  to 
have  been  built  for  another  house.  It 
was  perhaps  all  that  remained  of  some 
castle  that  had  fallen  to  pieces,  one  per- 
haps which  the  misfortunes  of  the  hour 
and  of  the  people  who  inhabited  it,  pre- 
vented from  being  re-erected  on  the 
plan  of  its  primitive  magnificence. 

It  was  there  that  Lasthenie,  without 
companions  of  her  age,  without  the 
games  she  might  have  shared  with 
them,  separated  from  all  things  by  the 
grief  and  forbidding  piety  of  her  mother, 
passed  the  long  hours  of  her  joyless 
childhood.  It  may  be  that  the  empti- 
ness of  that  immense  stairway  made  her 

[68] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

feel  more  keenly  the  other  emptiness  of 
an  existence  which  a  mother's  love 
should  have  filled;  and  it  may  be — like 
those  predestined  to  misfortune  w^ho 
torment  themselves  while  awaiting  the 
torment  to  come — it  may  be  that  the 
girl  loved  to  mingle  the  weariness  of 
that  spacious  stairway  with  the  weari- 
ness of  her  empty  youth. 

Generally  speaking,  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
left  her  room  in  the  morning  and  did 
not  return  until  night,  a  circumstance 
which  might  have  led  her  to  fancy  that 
Lasthenie  was  amusing  herself  in  the 
garden;  whereas,  in  reaHty,  the  child  sat 
hour  after  hour,  forgotten  on  the  dumb, 
sonorous  stair. 

A  hand  on  her  cheek,  the  elbow  on  her 
knee,  in  that  attitude  which  the  genius 
of  Albert  Diirer  gave  to  the  figure  of 
Melancholy,  she  sat  congealing  in  the 

[69] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

stupor  of  dream  as  though  in  a  vision 
she  had  seen  her  Destiny  ascend  and  re- 
descend  those  terrible  stairs. 

Surely  if  places  have  an  influence, 
then  this  gloomy  mansion  —  which 
looked  like  an  immense  bat  that  had 
fallen  w^ith  wings  outstretched  at  the 
foot  of  the  mountains  against  which  it 
lay — must  have  added  a  shadow  of  its 
own  to  the  other  shadows  from  which 
the  immaculate  forehead  of  the  girl 
emerged. 

In  so  far  as  Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  con- 
cerned her  own  melancholy  could  not 
have  been  increased.  The  influence  of 
the  place  could  not  affect  a  bronze  oxid- 
ized by  grief.  After  the  death  of  her 
husband,  who  had  always  lived  largely 
and  well,  she  plunged  into  reHgion  to 
cool  her  heart.  Every  trace  of  luxury 
disappeared.     The  horses  and  carriages 

[70] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

were  sold,  the  servants  dismissed — all, 
in  fact,  save  one,  Agathe,  who  had 
grown  old  in  her  service,  and  who  had 
come  with  her  from  Normandy. 

This  change  gave  the  gossips  of  the 
village  something  to  cackle  over.  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  was  accused  of  avarice.  But 
presently  the  accusation  fell  of  itself. 
The  good  that  she  did  for  the  poor, 
though  done  secretly,  became  known, 
and  at  last,  little  by  little,  there  came 
to  the  gossips  a  confused  understanding 
of  the  beneficence  and  good  quahties 
which  this  gentlewoman,  who  had  with- 
drawn into  retirement  and  the  dignity 
of  grief,  really  possessed.  At  church — 
and  she  was  seldom  seen  elsewhere — a 
respectful  curiosity  surrounded  her;  and 
there,  majestic  in  appearance,  gar- 
mented in  long,  black  robes,  motionless, 
among  the  tumbling  arches  and  squat 

[71] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

pillars  of  the  rough  Romanic  edifice, 
she  looked  as  might  some  former  Mer- 
ovingian queen  that  had  issued  from 
the  tomb. 

And,  after  a  fashion  of  her  own,  she 
was  a  sort  of  queen.  She  reigned  un- 
consciously, without  even  wishing  to, 
over  the  entire  hamlet,  which  was  not, 
it  is  true,  a  kingdom.  But  at  least  she 
reigned;  and  if,  unlike  the  former  kings 
of  Persia,  she  was  not  invisible  to  her 
subjects,  she  resembled  them  by  the  dis- 
tance she  put  between  herself  and  the 
little  world  in  which  she  lived,  but  with 
which  she  had  nothing  in  common. 

Easter  that  year  was  in  April,  and 
the  Saturday  preceding  it  happened  to 
be  one  of  those  workdays  which  in  the 
provinces  are  almost  solemn.  A  year's 
linen  had  to  be  laundered.     Since  dawn, 

[72] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Agathe  and  a  washerwoman  had  been 
hard  at  work.  The  garden  paths  be- 
hind the  house  were  draped  with  sheets 
and  napkins  that  floated,  swollen  by  the 
breeze.  As  they  dried  they  were 
carried  into  the  dining-room  and  there 
left  in  heaps  for  the  Ladies  of  Ferjol, 
when  they  returned  from  mass,  to  fold 
and  arrange.  That  was  a  thing  which 
no  one  else  was  permitted  to  do.  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  took  a  real  Norman  pleasure 
in  linen,  one  that  her  daughter  shared; 
and,  long  before,  she  had  begun  on  the 
superb  trousseau  which  she  was  to  give 
to  Lasthenie  on  her  bridal-day. 

So  soon  therefore  as  they  reached 
home  they  immediately  sought  the  din- 
ing-room, and  at  the  table,  one  in  front 
of  the  other,  they  set  their  aristocratic 
hands  to  work.     And  as  they  worked 

[73] 


Tlie  Storjj  Without  a  Name 

Agathe  appeared  with  a  flood  of  dry 
linen,  which  she  dropped  before  them 
Hke  an  avalanche. 

"St.  Agathe!"  she  cried — an  expres- 
sion of  hers,  the  name  of  her  patron 
saint — "there's  a  lot  for  you!  White, 
isn't  it  ?  And  dry !  And  it  smells  good, 
too.  More  than  both  Madame  and 
Mademoiselle  can  fold  before  dinner. 
But  there!  the  dinner  to-day  can  wait. 
Neither  of  you  is  ever  hungry,  and  the 
Capuchin  has  gone.  Yes,  indeed,  and 
for  good.  That's  the  way  these  Cap- 
uchins go,  without  so  much  as  a  word 
to  those  that  have  lodged  them." 

Old  Agathe,  who  had  been  young 
once,  and  handsome  too,  had  accom- 
panied her  passionate  mistress  at  the 
time  of  her  scandalous  elopement,  and  it 
was    just    that,    together    with    having 

nursed  Mile,  de  Ferjol  and  remained  in 

[74] 


The  Story  Without  a  Nartie 

what  she  called  a  marmot's  hole,  which 
gave  her  the  right  to  speak  freely. 

"Why,  Agathe,"  said  Mme.  de  Ferjol, 
severely,  "what  do  you  mean?  Father 
Riculf  gone!  Don't  you  know  that 
this  is  Good  Saturday,  and  that  at  ves- 
pers to-morrow  he  is  to  preach  on  the 
Resurrection?" 

Agathe  was  an  old  maid,  and  by  the 
Norman  accent  which  she  had  never 
lost,  the  Norman  bonnet  which  she  still 
wore,  you  could  see  that  she  was  ob- 
stinate. 

"I  can't  help  it — I  know  what  I  am 
talking  about,"  she  answered.  "The 
beadle  came  asking  for  him  this  morn- 
ing; there  was  a  crowd  at  his  confes- 
sional awaiting  absolution  for  the  com- 
munion to-morrow.  But  I  couldn't  give 
him  to  the  beadle,  could  I?  At  day- 
break I  met  him  on  the  stairs,  he  had 

[75] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

his  hood  over  his  head,  and  in  his  hand 
was  the  staff  which  usually  he  leaves 
behind  his  bedroom  door.  He  passed 
me  straight  as  an  I,  without  a  word,  his 
eyes  lowered,  and  my  opinion  is  his  eyes 
are  worse  when  they  are  lowered  than 
when  they  are  not.  I  knew  he  couldn't 
have  taken  his  staff  to  go  to  mass,  a 
step  from  here,  so  I  followed  on  his 
heels,  to  see  where  he  was  going.  Well, 
he  took  the  highway  at  the  foot  of  Big 
Calvary,  and  I  can  tell  you,  if  he  has 
kept  up  the  same  gait,  he  is  far  away 
now,  he  and  his  sandals." 

'It  is  impossible!"  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
exclaimed.     "He  cannot  have  gone." 

''Like  the  smoke  of  my  kitchen," 
Agathe    insisted,    "and    with   as    little 


noise." 


And  it  was  true.     He  had  really  gone. 
But  the  fact  of  the  matter,  which  none 

[76] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

of  them  knew,  was  this,  that  Capuchins 
always  depart  in  that  fashion.  They 
ofo  as  death  and  Christ  come — hke 
thieves.  You  enter  their  room  some 
morning,  and  they  have  evaporated.  It 
is  their  custom  and  their  poetry. 
Chateaubriand,  who  knew  what  poetry 
is,  says  of  them:  ''The  next  day  they 
were  sought,  but  they  had  vanished  Hke 
the  holy  apparitions  that  sometimes  visit 
the  heart  and  home  of  man." 

At  that  time  neither  Chateaubriand 
nor  his  Genie  du  Christianisme  existed; 
moreover  the  previous  guests  of  the 
Ladies  de  Ferjol  had  been  both  less 
poetic  and  less  severe;  outside  of  the 
church  they  were  men  of  the  world,  in- 
capable of  leaving  a  host  without  some 
courteous  word  of  thanks  and  apprecia- 
tion. 

But  the  Ladies  de  Ferjol  cared  too 

[77] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

little  for  the  Capuchin  to  be  annoyed,  as 
Agathe  was,  by  the  silent  abruptness  of 
his  departure.  He  had  gone,  had  he? 
Well,  let  him  go.  During  the  time  that 
he  had  been  with  them  he  disappointed 
them  more  than  he  had  pleased.  Such 
were  their  thoughts.  But  Agathe  felt 
more  deeply.  To  her,  Father  Riculf 
represented  that  inexplicable  thing 
which  is  called  Antipathy. 

"We  are  well  rid  of  him,"  she  mut- 
tered; then,  correcting  herself,  she 
added:  "It  may  be  wrong  of  me  to 
speak  of  a  man  of  God  like  that,  but, 
all  the  same,  I  can't  help  it;  I  have  a 
poor  opinion  of  him.  And  think  of  the 
difference  between  him  and  the  others 
that  have  been  here,  pleasant  all  of  them, 
apostolic  and  indulgent!  There  was 
that  Prior,  don't  you  remember,  ma- 
dame?     He  was   here   two   years   ago. 

[78] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

How  nice  he  was!  All  in  white,  like  a 
bride,  even  to  his  shoes.  Father  Riculf 
resembles  him  as  a  wolf  resembles  a 
Iamb." 

"You  should  not  judge  anyone,"  said 
Mme.  de  Ferjol,  gravely.  It  was  for  her 
conscience  sake,  no  doubt,  that  she 
spoke  in  this  way,  and  perhaps  also  she 
reproached  herself  for  the  same  thing 
which  she  blamed  in  her  servant. 
"Father  Riculf  is  a  priest  whose  elo- 
quence and  faith  are  incontestable. 
Since  he  has  been  here  he  has  not  said 
or  done  a  single  thing  that  anyone  could 
find  fault  with.  You  have  no  right, 
Agathe,  to  think  ill  of  him.  Has  she, 
Lasthenie?" 

"No,  mamma,"  Lasthenie's  pure  voice 
replied.  "But  don't  scold  her.  You 
and  I  have  often  said  that  there  was 
something  perplexing  about  him,  some- 

[79] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

thing  that  we  could  not  define.  Why 
was  it?  We  have  not  thought  ill  of  him 
perhaps,  but  we  did  not  trust  him.  You 
would  not  confess  to  him  any  more  than 
I  would." 

"And  we  have  both  been  wrong  per- 
haps," Mme.  de  Ferjol  replied.  "We 
might  both  have  done  better.  In  re- 
fusing for  groundless  reasons  to  kneel 
at  his  feet  we  condemned  him  in  our 
hearts,  a  thing  that  we  had  no  right  to 
do." 

"Ah!"  the  young  girl  naively  ex- 
claimed, "as  for  me  I  never  could.  He 
impressed  me  with  a  dread  that  I  could 
not  overcome." 

"He  talked  of  nothing  but  hell.  Al- 
ways it  was  on  the  tip  of  his  tongue," 
panted  Agathe,  as  though  trying  to  jus- 
tify the  fear  which  the  young  girl  ex- 
pressed.    "No  one  has  ever  talked   so 

[80] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

much  about  it.  He  damned  us  all.  I 
knew  a  priest  years  ago  in  Normandy; 
they  called  him  Father  Love,  because  he 
only  preached  of  paradise  and  the  love 
of  God.  Father  Riculf  will  never  be 
known  by  that  name." 

"There!"  said  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who 
wished  the  conversation  to  end  because 
it  was  uncharitable — "there!  be  quiet! 
If  Father  Riculf  were  to  come  in  now — 
for  I  cannot  believe  that  on  the  eve  of 
Easter  he  can  have  gone  away — he 
would  find  us  gossiping  about  him, 
which  is  not  right.  As  for  you,  Agathe, 
since  you  think  he  is  not  here,  go  up  to 
his  room;  you  may  find  his  breviary 
somewhere,  and  that  will  show  that  he 
has  not  gone." 

Agathe  started  on  her  errand  at  once. 
The  two  ladies  said  nothing  further  con- 
cerning   the    enigmatic    Capuchin,    of 

[81] 


The  Stori)  Without  a  Name 

whom  they  knew  Httle,  and  of  whom 
they  feared  to  think  too  much.  Slowly 
they  resumed  the  interrupted  task. 

It  was  a  simple  picture  of  home  life 
that  these  two  ladies  presented.  The 
room  was  vast  and  high-ceiled,  about 
them  were  hillocks  of  white  linen,  which, 
as  Agathe  had  said,  smelled  good,  and 
exhaled  the  perfume  of  dew  and  of  the 
hedges  on  which  the  linen  had  dried. 
The  ladies  were  silent,  but  attentive  to 
their  work.  Now  and  then,  to  fold  a 
sheet  rightly,  they  looked  for  the  hem, 
each  held  a  half  and  struck  it  with  the 
hand.  The  hands  of  each  were  beauti- 
ful, and  each  had  a  particular  beauty. 
Lasthenie,  that  lily  of  the  valley,  deli- 
cious in  a  dark-green  gown  that  made 
her  pale  and  melancholy  face  look  like 
a  flower  in  its  leaves,  and  Mme.  de  Fer- 

[82] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

jol,  in  her  black  gown  and  widow's  cap, 
her  hair  whitened  about  the  temples  less 
by  years  than  by  grief — each  had  a 
beauty  of  her  own. 

Suddenly  Agathe  reappeared. 

"He  must  have  gone,"  she  said.  "I 
have  looked  everywhere  and  found  but 
this,  and  whether  he  left  it  on  purpose 
or  forgot  it  when  he  went,  I,  for  one, 
don't  know." 

And  on  the  sheet  which  the  ladies 
were  folding  she  placed  a  heavy  rosary 
such  as  Capuchins  wear  at  the  girdle. 
It  was  of  ebony,  and  in  the  middle,  to 
separate  the  black  beads,  was  a  death's 
head  in  yellow  ivory,  a  color  that  made 
the  head  seem  still  more  skull-like,  and 
gave  it  the  appearance  of  having  been 
disinterred  long  ago. 

Mme.    de    Ferjol    stretched    a    hand, 

[83] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

raised  the  rosary  with  respect,  and,  after 
examining  it,  put  it  down  before  her 
daughter. 

But  Lasthenie,  as  she  picked  it  up, 
felt  her  fingers  twitch,  and  dropped  it. 

''Keep  it  for  yourself,  mamma,"  she 
murmured. 

Instinct!  Instinct!  The  flesh  is 
sometimes  wiser  than  the  mind.  Yet 
at  that  moment  Lasthenie  could  not 
have  told  why  her  charming  fingers  had 
trembled. 

As  for  Agathe,  she  afterward  believed 
that  the  rosary  which  the  hands  of  the 
terrible  Capuchin  had  held,  and  on  the 
beads  of  which  he  had  left  his  influence, 
was  like  the  gloves  that  are  mentioned 
in  the  chronicles  of  the  days  of  Catherine 
de  Medici.  She  had  never  heard  of 
them,  of  course,  but  she  believed  that  the 
rosary  was  contagiously  poisoned. 

[84] 


IV 


BY  midday  It  was  evident  that 
Agathe  was  right.  The  Capuchin 
had  really  gone.  The  crowd  that 
waited  about  his  confessional  waited  In 
vain;  and  when  between  vespers  and 
evening  service  the  village  priest  was 
obliged  to  replace  him  and  preach  the 
Resurrection  in  his  stead,  the  entire 
hamlet  considered  It  outrageous.  But 
the  Impression  which  his  abrupt  depar- 
ture caused  did  not  last.  After  all, 
what  does?  The  rain  of  days  that  drips 
drop  by  drop  upon  us  carried  it  away, 
just  as  In  autumn  the  rain  disperses  the 
leaves  on  which  it  falls.  The  monotony 
which  he  had  interrupted  returned,  and 

[85] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

presently  the  Ladies  de  Ferjol  ceased  to 
mention  him.  Whether  they  thought 
of  him  or  not,  who  shall  say?  In  this 
story  without  a  name  there  are  many 
obscurities.  At  the  same  time  the  im- 
pression which  this  man,  once  seen,  pro- 
duced, was  unforgettable;  the  more  so 
even  because  no  one  could  explain  why 
he  could  not  be  forgotten.  The  fact, 
however,  remained.  During  the  entire 
time  that  he  had  been  the  guest  of  these 
ladies,  he  had  shown  himself  distant  and 
respectful,  and  in  his  daily  relations 
with  them  he  had  manifested  both  tact 
and  breeding.  But  of  himself  never  a 
word  did  he  utter.  Where  was  he 
born?  What  had  his  life  been?  How 
was  he  educated?  These  subjects 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  touched  upon,  and  like 
a  true  woman  of  the  world  ceased  to 
touch  upon  when  she  saw  that  he  was 

[86] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

as   marble   is,   cold,    impenetrable,   pol-. 
ished.     She  could  see  the  Capuchin  in 
him,  and  nothing  else. 

The  Capuchins  were  no  longer  then 
what  they  had  been.  Their  order,  sub- 
lime in  its  Christian  humility,  had  lost 
something  of  that  sublimity.  There 
were  evil  days  ahead.  The  incredulous 
epicurism  of  the  century  had  enervated 
creeds  and  customs.  Orders  renowned 
for  their  holiness  no  longer  possessed 
that  austerity  which  rendered  them  im- 
posing even  to  the  impious.  In  the 
town  where  Mme.  de  Ferjol  danced  her 
first  contredances  with  the  adorable 
baron,  she  remembered  meeting  a  Cap- 
uchin whose  beauty  was  so  noticeable 
that  it  was  impossible  not  to  notice  it, 
Capuchin  though  he  were,  and  who, 
while  he  had  come,  as  Father  Riculf 
had,  to  officiate  during  Lent,  exhibited 

[87] 


The  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

in  the  garb  of  poverty  and  renunciation 
the  affectations  of  a  dandy.  It  was 
rumored  that  he  was  of  noble  birth,  a 
fact  which  may  have  rendered  a  set  of 
people  who  could  be  severe  enough  in 
their  way,  more  or  less  indulgent  to  a 
scandalous  Capuchin  who  perfumed  his 
beard  and  who  beneath  his  frock  wore 
silk  instead  of  haircloth.  Mme.  de 
Ferjol,  at  that  time  Mile.  d'Olonde,  had 
met  him  in  society,  where  he  flirted  in 
the  corners  with  this  woman  and  with 
that,  and  whispered  to  them  behind  the 
fan. 

But  though  many  a  year  since  then 
had  added  to  that  general  corruption 
which  was  to  dissolve  the  solid  bronze 
of  France,  and  pour  it  like  mire  into  the 
decanter  of  the  Revolution,  Father  Ri- 
culf  in  no  wise  resembled  that  love-mak- 
ing Capuchin.     He  exhaled  none  of  the 

[88] 


TJie  Story  Without  a  Name 

vices  of  the  day.  He  seemed  mediaeval, 
like  his  name.  The  antipathy  which  he 
inspired  in  Mme.  de  Ferjol  and  in  her 
daughter  was  without  apparent  cause. 

Whether,  after  he  had  gone,  they 
thought  of  him,  it  is  difficult  to  say ;  and 
yet  it  is  difficult  to  fancy  that  they  did 
not.  He  was  a  mystery  to  them,  and, 
of  all  things,  mystery  is  the  one  which 
disturbs  the  imagination  most.  You 
who  wish  to  be  loved  by  those  that  love 
you,  never  let  yourself  be  wholly  known. 
Even  in  your  kisses  let  there  be  a  secret. 
While  Father  Riculf  was  the  guest  of 
the  Ladies  de  Ferjol  he  was  a  mystery 
to  them,  but  when  he  went  he  must 
have  been  a  greater  one  yet.  When  he 
was  with  them  they  could  fancy  the  mo- 
ment would  come  in  which  the  mystery 
would  be  explained,  but  once  gone  he  re- 
mained indecipherably  an  enigma. 

[89] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

And  from  beyond  not  a  ray!     To  the 
Ladies  de  Ferjol  no  light  was  vouch- 
safed, even  retrospectively,  on  the  Ca- 
puchin who,  of  a  morning,  had  left  their 
life  and  house,  as  of  an  evening  he  en- 
tered it,  without,  when  he  came,  men- 
tioning whence  he  had  come,  or,  when 
he  went,  mentioning  whither  he  was  go- 
ing.    It  was  like  the  text  in  the  Bible: 
"Tell  me  whence  he  came,  and  I  will  tell 
you   whither   he   has   gone."     But   that 
they  could  not  do;  he  had  not  told  them. 
Presumably  he  belonged   to   some  dis- 
tant monastery,  and  wandered,  like  all 
of  those  of  his  calling,  from  one  end  of 
France  to  the  other.     In  the  villages  ad- 
jacent to  the  hamlet  that  he  had  shaken 
with  his  eloquence  no  one  had  seen  him. 
In  the  streets  no  one  had  turned  to  look 
at  a  man  who  could  go  nowhere  with- 
out attracting-  attention — a  man  who  in 

[90] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

a  tattered  robe  was  magnificence  itself, 
one  who  looked  the  very  Emperor  of 
Poverty.  No  doubt  he  had  gone  to 
some  faraway  land  in  order  perhaps  to 
be  forgotten.  And  yet  wheresoever  he 
wandered  he  must  have  sown  a  profound 
remembrance  of  his  passing,  a  remem- 
brance which,  by  the  expression  he  had, 
might  readily  become  destructive. 

Had  he  left  such  a  memory  anywhere  ? 
Apparently  he  was  young,  but  there  are 
hearts  terribly  old  in  beings  that  seem 
still  youthful;  and  if  up  to  that  time  he 
had  left  none  elsewhere,  was  he  to  leave 
one  in  the  soul  of  that  poor  Lasthenie 
de  Ferjol,  who  trembled  like  a  leaf  be- 
fore him,  and  to  whom  his  departure 
brought  a  feeling  of  deliverance  and  re- 
lief? 

To  her  he  had  always  been  what 
young  girls  who  have  antipathies  call 

[91] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

their  "nightmare" ;  and  if  Lasthenie  had 
not  so  called  him  it  was  because  both  in 
person  and  in  speech  she  lacked  the 
strength. 

She  was  charming,  yet  fragile,  pos- 
sessing as  it  were  the  fatality  of  her 
weakness;  and  she  was  relieved  at  the 
departure  of  one  who,  without  rhyme 
or  reason,  had  impressed  her  like  a 
loaded  gun  in  a  corner. 

The  gun  was  no  longer  there.  She 
was  glad  of  it,  and  yet  in  her  face  no 
sign  of  the  joy  of  that  deliverance  was 
visible.  For  some  little  time  there  had 
come  between  her  long  eyebrows,  ordi- 
narily sad  though  placid,  the  furrow  of 
inexplicable  horror  and  unknown  dread. 
Now  and  then  the  purity  and  melan- 
choly of  her  forehead  would  suddenly 
contract  into  wrinkles.     Mme.  de  Ferjol 

never  noticed  them.     Agathe  did. 

[92] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

The  latter's  instinctive  dislike  of  the 
Capuchin  brought  her  a  sagacity  which 
the  mother  lacked.  Had  she  been  an 
Italian  she  would  have  believed  in  the 
evil  eye;  she  would  have  thought  of  that 
mysterious  jettatura,  by  which  the  pas- 
sionate Italians,  who  believe  only  in 
love  and  hate,  explain  any  misfortune 
which  they  do  not  understand.  But 
Agathe  was  Norman,  and  the  supersti- 
tions of  her  country  were  of  a  different 
kind.  She  believed  in  witchcraft,  in  in- 
visible spells,  and  she  suspected  Father 
Riculf  of  being  capable  of  casting  one, 
and  of  having  cast  one  on  Lasthenie. 
Why  on  Lasthenie,  who  was  sweetness 
and  innocence  personfied?  Precisely 
for  that  reason,  just  because  she  was 
sweet  and  innocent,  because  the  demon 
who  does  evil  for  evil's  sake,  hates  par- 
ticularly innocence,  and  being  a  fallen 

[93] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

angel,  is  jealous  of  those  who  remain  in 
the  light.  To  Agathe,  Lasthenie  was 
an  angel  who  on  earth  had  never  ceased 
to  inhabit  the  light  of  heaven. 

It  was  under  this  idea  of  a  ''spell"  that 
the  old  woman  carried  away  the  black 
rosary  and  its  death's  head,  which  Las- 
thenie's  fingers  had  touched  and  shrunk 
from,  and  treated  it  like  a  holy  relic  that 
had  been  profaned.  Fire  purifies  every- 
thing, and  piously  she  burned  it.  But 
the  "spell"  which  she  imagined  was  still 
efifective.  It  had  come  from  hell,  where 
everything  is  burning,  and,  like  a  burn 
that  burrows  and  sears  in  the  flesh,  she 
fancied  it  burrowing  and  searing  in  Las- 
thenie's  soul.  At  the  table,  from  behind 
Mme.  de  Ferjol's  chair,  where  she  stood, 
a  napkin  in  one  hand,  a  plate  in  the 
other,  she  watched  Lasthenie,  who  had 

[94] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

ceased  to  eat,  and  whose  face  grew  paler 
day  by  day. 

The  deHcate  beauty  of  the  child  had 
begun  to  fade.  It  was  barely  two 
months  since  Riculf  had  gone,  yet  the 
evil  he  had  brought  to  the  house  was 
visibly  at  work.  The  diabolic  seed 
which  Agathe  fancied  he  had  sown  was 
commencing  to  sprout.  It  was,  how- 
ever, by  no  means  extraordinary  that 
Lasthenie  should  seem  melancholy. 
She  had  always  been  so.  Born  in  a  pit 
that  Agathe  detested,  in  a  place  where 
at  high  noon  it  was  hardly  daylight,  and 
where  she  dwelt  with  a  mother  who 
thought  only  of  the  husband  she  had 
lost,  and  who  never  gave  her  a  word  of 
tenderness,  why,  Agathe  reflected,  with- 
out me  that  darling  wo.uld  have  never 
smiled.     Never  would  she  have  shown 

[95  1 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

her  pretty  teeth.  But  it  is  not  the  blues 
that  are  affecting  her,  it  is  a  spell,  and  a 
spell  is  death.  Such  were  Agathe's 
ruminations. 

"Are  you  suffering,  mademoiselle?" 
she  would  ask,  quaking  with  uneasiness 
she  could  not  always  hide ;  "are  you  suf- 
fering?" 

And  Lasthenie  with  her  pale  lips 
would  always  answer  that  she  was  not. 
It  is  a  way  young  girls  have,  of  denying 
that  they  suffer  when  they  do.  And 
Lasthenie  evidently  was  suft'ering.  Her 
eyes  were  hollow.  The  lily  of  the  val- 
ley of  her  skin  was  bruised,  and  on  her 
opal  forehead  the  furrow  between  the 
brows  was  not  that  of  a  dream  which 
passes;  it  expressed  something  more. 

Her  life,  externally,  had  not  changed; 
it  was  the  same  round  of  household 
duties,  the  same  needlework  in  the  em- 

[96] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

brasure  of  the  same  window,  the  same 
visits  with  her  mother  to  church,  and 
the  same  walks  with  her  along  the  moun- 
tain slope.  These  walks  as  a  rule  were 
taken  late  in  the  afternoon,  and  from 
the  vesperal  promenades  the  ladies 
rarely  returned  until  they  heard  the  An- 
gelus  rising  under  their  feet  and  mount- 
ing toward  them  from  the  depths  of  the 
little  valley  where  the  black  Romanic 
church  crouched  and  sounded  what 
Dante  has  called  the  agony  of  the  dying 
day.  They  descended  then  into  the 
enshadowed  hamlet  and  sought  the 
tomb-like  church,  where  it  was  their 
custom,  every  evening,  to  pray  before 
supper. 

At  times,  when  Mme.  de  Ferjol  for 
one  reason  or  another  remained  at  home, 
Lasthenie  would  walk  alone.  There 
was  no  imprudence  in  that.     The  slopes 

[97] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

were  safe,  and  their  safety  came  of  their 
isolation.  Strangers  and  vagabonds 
rarely  passed  through  a  hollow  that  was 
closed  in  on  every  side,  and  where,  like 
a  race  of  troglodytes,  there  dwelt  a  sed- 
entary population,  of  whom  many,  en- 
chanted by  the  somber  enchantment  of 
their  prison,  had  never  crossed  the 
mountain  walls.  It  was  on  the  other 
side  of  the  slopes  that  travelers  passed, 
and,  with  them,  the  mendicants  and 
prowlers  of  every  kind  whom  it  might 
be  dangerous  for  a  young  girl  to  meet. 
But  on  the  valley  side  there  was  no  one 
to  be  feared.  Besides,  the  Ladies  de 
Ferjol  were  almost  superstitiously  re- 
spected. Lasthenie  could  have  called 
by  name  each  one  of  the  little  goatherds 
who  guarded  their  charges  in  the  aerial 
pasturages,  each  of  the  women  who 
went  at  evening  to  the  sloping  meadows 

[98] 


TJie  Story  Without  a  Name 

where  the  cows  were  milked,  and  each 
of  the  trout-fishers  as  well.  She  knew 
them  all,  and  they  knew  her.  Then, 
too,  Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  seldom  long 
separated  from  her  daughter.  She  re- 
joined her  the  more  easily  because, 
knowing  which  way  she  was  going,  it 
was  easy  to  see  her  afar,  on  some  slope. 
For  that  matter,  even  from  the  windows 
of  the  gaunt  gray  house  whose  only  per- 
spective was  the  mountains  before  them, 
Lasthenie  was  generally  in  sight. 

One  evening  Lasthenie  returned 
earlier  than  usual,  greatly  fatigued  and 
more  changed  than  before.  The  change 
was  not  one  which  only  a  watchful  ob- 
server would  have  noticed,  it  was  a 
change  that  was  haggard  and  hard,  one 
that  was  visible  to  everyone.  To 
Agathe,  who  indefatigably  inquired  how 
she  was,  she  no  longer  denied  that  she 

[99] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

suffered,  only  she  could  not  explain  what 
it  was. 

''I  don't  know  what  is  the  matter  with 
me,"  she  would  say. 

Her  mother,  lost  as  she  was  in  her  de- 
votions and  in  the  memories  of  her  hus- 
band that  devoured  her  life,  thus  far 
had  noticed  nothing.  But  that  evening 
she  did.  Lasthenie,  who  was  to  have 
been  met  by  her  mother  on  the  moun- 
tain -  side  after  prayer,  went  to  the 
church,  unable  to  wait  longer.  When 
she  entered,  her  mother  was  kneeling 
before  the  confessional,  and  she  dropped 
on  a  bench  behind  her,  worn  out  with 
fatigue. 

The  darkness  of  the  church,  dark  at 
its  brightest,  was  momentarily  increas- 
ing. The  windows  gave  no  light.  But 
when  Mme.  de  Ferjol  left  the  confes- 

[100] 


The  Story  Witliout  a  Name 

sional  it  was  not  yet  the  hour  for  supper, 
and  finding  Lasthenie  near  her,  she  re- 
marked that  the  morrow  was  a  saint's 
day,  and  asked  her  why  she  did  not  then 
prepare  herself,  that  they  might  partake 
of  the  communion  together. 

Lasthenie  shook  her  head,  she  did  not 
care  to,  and  remained  where  she  was 
while  her  mother  prayed.  She  was  ut- 
terly weary,  and  at  the  moment  there 
had  come  to  her  that  indifference  that 
weariness  brings. 

The  refusal  to  confess  astonished 
Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who,  fearing  to  en- 
counter a  resistance  which  would  have 
irritated  her,  did  not  insist.  She  ac- 
cepted it  as  an  added  cross.  Her  annoy- 
ance, nevertheless,  was -extreme,  for  her 
will  was  as  absolute  as  her  faith,  and  as 
they  left  the  church   together  and  re- 

[  101  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

turned  to  their  home,  Lasthenie  felt  her 
mother's  arm  tremble  with  repressed 
emotion  on  her  own.  On  the  way, 
neither  spoke. 

At  the  corner  of  the  square  was  a 
blacksmith,  whose  forge  sent  through 
the  open  door  a  tongue  of  flame;  this 
they  crossed,  and  Lasthenie  was  so 
white  that  that  red  light,  which  red- 
dened the  entire  square,  could  not  red- 
den her  pallor,  at  that  moment  extreme. 

''How  pale  you  are!"  said  Mme.  de 
Ferjol;  ''what  is  the  matter?" 

Lasthenie  answered  that  she  was 
tired. 

But  when,  as  usual,  they  were  seated 
opposite  each  other  at  the  table,  Mme. 
de  Ferjol's  black  eyes  became  blacker 
as  she  scrutinized  her  daughter,  and 
Lasthenie  felt  that  her  mother  was 
angry  at  her  refusal.     She  did  not  un- 

[102] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

derstand,  nor  could  she  understand, 
that  she  had  driven  into  her  mother  an 
impression  that  the  latter  was  to  find 
again  like  a  nail,  and  on  which  she  was 
to  hang  a  terrible  suspicion. 


[103] 


y 


THE  next  day  Mme.  de  Ferjol  sent 
Agathe  for  the  doctor. 

"Ah!"  the  servant,  with  her  custom- 
ary frankness,  exclaimed,  "Madame  sees 
then  that  Mademoiselle  is  ill.  I  could 
have  told  her  so  long  ago,  and  would 
have,  if  Mademoiselle  hadn't  forbidden 
me,  and  said  she  didn't  want  to  worry 
her  mamma  about  an  indisposition 
which  would  go  of  itself.  But  it  has 
not  gone  all  the  same,  and  I  shall  be 
glad  to  see  the  doctor,  although  .  .  ." 

She  did  not  say  all  she  might  have, 
for,  superstitious  as  she  was,  she  did  not 
believe  that  the  doctor  would  be  of  much 
service.     Nevertheless,   she  ran  off  for 

[104] 


The  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

him  at  once,  and  presently  he  came.  He 
questioned  the  girl,  but  gathered  little 
from  her  answers.  Mile,  de  Ferjol  said 
merely  that  she  felt  a  weariness  and  dis- 
gust of  all  things. 

"Even  for  God?"  her  mother  bitterly 
threw  at  her. 

It  was  a  question  she  could  not  with- 
hold, so  annoyed  was  she  at  the  girl's 
refusal  of  the  communion. 

Lasthenie,  who  never  complained, 
made  no  answer,  but  the  question 
sounded  in  her  ears  like  a  prophetic 
threat  of  the  future;  she  felt  that  her 
mother's  piety  might  one  day  become 
cruel. 

Whether  or  not  the  physician  under- 
stood what  Mile,  de  Ferjol's  condition 
was,  he  gave  no  hint  to  the  mother. 
Any  uneasiness  he  might  have  had  he 
kept  to  himself,  with  the  idea  perhaps 

[  105  ] 


TJie  Story  Without  a  Name 

of  waiting  until  the  girl's  vague  symp- 
toms became  more  pronounced;  at  the 
same  time  he  spoke  of  the  complications 
common  enough  in  young  girls  of  Las- 
thenie's  age,  and  recommended  for  her 
care  and  diet  rather  than  medicine. 

"All  that  is  bosh,"  sniffed  Agathe. 
"Care  and  diet  won't  cure  Made- 
moiselle." 

And,  as  a  fact,  there  was  no  improve- 
ment in  the  singular  malady  which 
seemed  to  consume  her.  She  became 
more  listless,  and  the  nausea  increased. 

"So  you  want  me  to  tell  you  what  I 
think?"  Agathe  said  to  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
one  day  when  they  happened  to  be 
alone. 

The  dinner  was  over,  and  Lasthenie, 
to  whom  the  sight  of  food  was  distress- 
ing, had  gone  to  her  room,  that  she 
might  rest  awhile  on  the  bed. 

[106] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

"Here  is  a  whole  month  that  the  doc- 
tor has  been  coming,  and  for  nothing. 
Three  days  ago  he  was  here,"  she  con- 
tinued, violently.  "What  I  think  is  that 
Mademoiselle  has  more  need  of  a  priest 
to  exorcise  her  than  of  a  doctor  who  does 
no  good." 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  stared  as  though  she 
fancied  her  suddenly  attacked  with 
madness. 

But  the  immense  eyes  of  the  mistress 
did  not  in  the  least  frighten  the  serv- 
ant. 

"Yes,  madame,  a  priest  who  can  undo 
the  devilish  work  of  that  Capuchin." 

Mme.  de  Ferjol's  eyes  flashed. 
"What?  do  you  dare  to " 

"Yes,  madame,"  Agathe  intrepidly 
retorted,  "I  believe  that  Satan  has 
passed  this  way,  and  that  he  has  left 
what    he    leaves    wherever    he    goes. 

[107] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

When  he  can't  damn  the  soul,  it  is  the 
body  he  besets." 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  made  no  reply.  She 
put  her  head  in  her  hands  and  rested 
her  elbows  on  the  table,  from  which 
Agathe  had  already  removed  the  cloth. 
She  was  as  religious  as  her  servant, 
much  more  so  even,  and  what  the 
woman  had  said  pierced  her  heart  like 
an  arrow.     In  a  moment  she  looked  up: 

"Leave  me  alone  for  a  while." 

Then  her  frightened  face  sank  again 
into  her  hands,  and  Agathe  retreated, 
backwards,  the  better  to  judge  the  efifect 
she  had  produced  by  the  thunder  of  a 
single  word. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  not  superstitious, 
neither  was  she  a  mystic  in  the  Christian 
sense  of  that  term,  but  her  faith  was 
profound.  What  Agathe  had  said  im- 
pressed   her   deeply.     It    was    not    that 

[  "ios  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

she  would  have  denied  the  physical 
manifestations  and  visible  influence  of 
him  w^hom  the  Holy  Writ  entitled  the 
Evil  Spirit.  She  believed  in  these 
things,  calmly,  doctrinally,  in  the  exact 
measure  that  the  Church,  who  is  the 
mother  of  all  prudence  and  the  enemy 
of  all  frivolity,  authorizes  us  to  believe. 
Agathe's  opinion  impressed  her  there- 
fore, but  to  a  lesser  degree  than  it  would 
have  impressed  one  whose  imagination 
was  more  exalted  than  her  own.  It 
conveyed  to  her  an  idea  of  which 
Agathe  had  no  inkling.  The  woman 
within  her,  one  who  after  fifteen  long 
years  still  yearned  for  the  husband  she 
had  lost,  revealed  to  her  things  which 
Agathe,  in  the  celibacy  of  her  heart  and 
taciturnity  of  her  senses,  could  hardly 
divine.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  believed,  just 
as  Agathe   did,   that   Satan   has  in   his 

[109] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

service  incarnations  that  are  terrible; 
but  by  her  own  experience  she  knew 
what  Agathe  did  not,  that  of  them  all, 
Love  is  the  most  terrible.  And  abrupt- 
ly, in  a  lightning-flash,  there  came  to  her 
the  thought  that  love  was  perhaps  her 
daughter's  disease.  Her  face  was  still 
in  her  hands,  but  her  eyes — the  eyes  we 
all  of  us  have  to  look  down  into  the  night 
of  our  souls — were  fixed  on  that  sudden 
thought.  Yet,  there  being  no  decent 
society  in  the  neighborhood,  no  attrac- 
tive young  men,  and  as  she  and  her 
daughter  passed  the  days  in  the  solitude 
of  an  empty  house,  at  once  out  of  the 
night  of  her  own  soul  surged  the  image 
of  the  incomprehensible  Capuchin  who 
had  sprung  into  their  lives  and  van- 
ished. 

As  for  the  horror  that  Lasthenie  had 
invariably   exhibited   for   that   frightful 

[110] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

sphinx  who  for  full  forty  days  had 
dwelt  impenetrably  at  her  side,  did  it 
not  show  that  she  was  not  in  love  with 
him?  Not  at  all.  It  showed,  on  the 
contrary,  that  she  might  love  him  madly. 
Women  all  know  that.  Even  when 
their  feminine  instinct  does  not  divine 
it,  passion  teaches.  How  often  fear  or 
hatred  is  the  beginning  of  love!  And 
what  is  horror  but  the  union  of  fear  and 
hate  raised  to  their  highest  power? 

"She  feels  toward  you  as  she  might  to 
a  spider,"  said  a  mother  one  day  to  a 
man  that  loved  her  daughter.  A  month 
after  that  humiliating  speech  the  poor 
mother  was  far  from  suspecting  the 
culpable  and  hidden  bliss  with  which 
the  daughter  let  that  spider  suck  from 
her  heart  its  last  drop  of  virgin  blood. 

Lasthenie    had    trembled    before    the 

mysterious  Capuchin,  but  if  a  woman 

[111] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

has  not  trembled  before  a  man,  never 
will  she  love  him.  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
herself  had  trembled  at  the  irresistible 
white  soldier  who  had  carried  her  off  as 
Boreas  carried  off  Orythia.  She  had 
only  to  remember  her  past  to  fear  for 
her  daughter's  future. 

"If  Lasthenie  knows  what  is  the  mat- 
ter with  her,"  she  reflected,  "she  hides 
it." 

The  mother  recalled  that  when  she 
had  loved  she  too  had  hidden  it.  For 
love  readily  turns  to  falsehood;  it  is  vo- 
luptuous to  glue  to  a  burning  face  a 
mask  that  will  devour  it,  and  which 
shows,  when  it  drops,  the  scar  that 
nothing  can  hide. 

When  Mme.  de  Ferjol  looked  up  again 
she  was  calm,  but  she  was  determined 
to  know   the   cause   of  her   daue:hter's 


'«3' 


[112] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

illness.  To  the  doctor  she  gave  no  fur- 
ther thought.  It  was  for  her  to  dis- 
cover. Once  more  she  accused  herself 
of  her  life's  sin,  that  of  being  always 
more  wife  than  mother.  God  continued 
to  punish  her;  and  that,  she  reflected, 
she  deserved.  Later,  when  Lasthenie 
returned  from  her  room  and  took  her 
seat  in  the  embrasure  of  the  window 
where  both  of  them  sewed,  she  would 
have  been  frightened  had  she  seen  her 
mother's  eyes;  but  she  did  not  see. 
There  was  never  any  tenderness  there 
to  attract  her  own,  and  so  she  did  not 
seek  them. 

After  a  momentary  silence,  Alme.  de 
Ferjol,  who  was  mending  some  linen, 
looked  up. 

"How  do  you  feel?" 

Lasthenie  bent  over  her  work.     "Bet- 

[113] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

ter,"  she  answered;  but  from  her  eyes 
there  fell,  perpendicularly  and  without 
touching  the  cheek,  two  heavy  tears. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol,  her  needle  in  the  air, 
watched  them  fall,  and  she  saw  two 
others  fall,  larger  and  heavier  than  the 
first. 

"Then  what  are  you  crying  about? 
for  you  are  crying,"  the  mother  asked, 
in  a  voice  that  was  both  a  reproach  and 
an  accusation. 

Lasthenie  dried  her  eyes  with  the 
back  of  her  hand.     She  was  pale  as  a 


ghost. 


"I  don't  know,  mamma ;  it  is  physical, 
I  think." 

"I  too  think  it  is  physical,"  Mme.  de 

Ferjol    replied,    laying    stress    on    each 

word.     ''Why   should   you   cry?     Why 

are  you  so  miserable?     Why  are  you 

unhappy?" 

[114] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

The  burning  black  eyes  of  the  mother, 
transfixing  the  fair,  wet  eyes  of  the  girl, 
dried  them  at  once. 

Lasthenie  absorbed  her  tears.  The 
two  needles  went  to  work.  Again  there 
was  silence.  The  scene  was  short  but 
threatening.  They  had  both  leaned 
over  the  edge  of  that  abyss — lack  of 
confidence — which  separated  them,  and 
they  said  nothing  more  that  day. 

Silence  became  permanent  between 
them;  and  what  is  there  sadder,  more 
sinister  even,  than  the  intimacy  of  two 
people  who  have  ceased  to  speak? 

In  spite  of  her  resolutions,  Mme.  de 

Ferjol,  who  feared  to  know,  did  nothing, 

and    several    dumb    days    passed.     But 

finally,  one  sleepless  night,  in  thinking 

of  the  silence  that  bowed  them  one  in 

front  of  the  other,  oppressing  both  with 

an  uneasiness  which  in  itself  was  fright, 

[115] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  became  ashamed  of  her 
weakness. 

"If  she  is  a  coward,"  she  cried,  "so  be 
it!     I  am  not." 

She  rose  from  the  bed  and  took  a 
lamp  which  burned  all  night  in  order 
that  when  sleepless  she  might  see  the 
crucifix  that  hung  in  her  alcove  and  pray 
with  greater  fervor.  Only  now,  instead 
of  praying  to  it,  she  tore  it  violently 
from  the  wall,  and  took  it  with  her  as 
a  supreme  resource  against  the  maledic- 
tion she  was  going  to  seek,  and  which 
she  was  going  to  find.  It  was  needful 
to  her  to  end  at  once  the  insupportable 
anxiety  that  beset  her,  and,  all  in  white, 
like  a  specter,  she  entered  her  daugh- 
ter's room,  the  crucifix  in  one  hand,  the 
lamp  in  the  other. 

She  was  fright  itself,  yet  fortunately 
there   was    no    one    there    to    frighten. 

[116] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

Lasthcnie  scarcely  seemed  to  breathe; 
she  had  sunk  into  a  dreamless  sleep, 
that  inanimate  slumber  which  is  like 
unto  death,  and  which  at  night  over- 
takes those  who  during  the  day  have 
suffered  greatly.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  held 
the  lamp  above  her  head  and  let  the 
trembling  light  fall  from  her  trembling 
hand.  Then  lowering  it  she  held  it 
close  to  the  sleeping  child  whose  secret 
she  sought  to  discover. 

Then  at  once  she  cried  in  horror:  "I 
was  right;  I  see  it  in  her  face." 

A  cry,  parenthetically,  which  Las- 
thenie  did  not  hear,  and  which  if  she  had 
she  would  not  have  understood. 

"Yes,"  she  continued,  "I  see  it." 

Putting  the  lamp  on  the  table,  with 
one  quick  movement  she  lifted  the  cruci- 
fix over  the  face  of  the  girl  and  held  it 
as  she  might  have  held  a  hammer  with 

[117] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

which  she  intended  to  crush  what  was 
there.  For  a  second  only  she  held  it 
so.  Instead  of  falling  on  the  sleeping 
girl  she  turned  the  crucifix  and  struck 
herself,  violently,  with  the  frenzied  de- 
sire to  inflict  on  herself  a  ferocious  and 
fanatic  punishment.  The  force  of  the 
blow  was  such  that  the  blood  spouted, 
and  the  noise  of  it  awoke  Lasthenie, 
who,  seeing  the  light,  the  blood  that 
flowed,  and  that  mother  of  hers  striking 
herself  with  a  cross,  cried  out  in  terror. 

"Ah !  you  cry  out  now,  do  you !"  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  with  brutal  irony  exclaimed. 
"You  did  not  cry  out  when " 

She  stopped,  fearful  of  what  she  was 
about  to  say,  hesitating  at  what  she 
thought.  But  in  a  moment  she  found 
new  courage. 

"Hypocrite!  You  knew  how  to  be 
quiet,  to  hide  everything,  to  cover  it  all 

[118] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

up.  You  did  not  cry  out,  but  your  sin 
now  cries  out  in  your  face,  and  every- 
one will  hear  it  as  I  do.  You  did  not 
know  that  there  is  a  sign  which  tells  all 
and  never  deceives,  an  accusing  sign, 
and  that  you  have  it!" 

Lasthenie,  startled  and  terrified,  un- 
derstood nothing  of  what  her  mother 
said,  and  at  the  sight  of  the  horrible 
vision  she  might  have  gone  mad  perhaps, 
had  not  a  swoon  protected  her.  But, 
pitiless  for  the  swoon  of  which  she  was 
the  cause,  the  implacable  mother  aban- 
doned her  daughter  fainting  on  the  bed, 
and,  falling  on  her  knees,  the  crucifix 
in  her  upraised  hands,  she  prayed  aloud, 
kissing  the  crucifix  as  she  prayed,  and 
tearing  her  lips  with  its  nails. 

''My  God,  forgive  me!  Forgive  me 
her  sin,  which  I  share,  for  I  have  not 
watched  her  enough.     Like  the  ungrate- 

[119] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

fill  disciples  in  the  Garden  of  Geth- 
semane  I  have  fallen  asleep,  and  the 
traitor  came  while  I  was  sleeping.  Let 
my  blood,  O  Lord,  be  the  expiation  of 
her  sin  and  of  mine." 

She  struck  herself  again,  on  the  breast, 
on  the  forehead,  and  the  blood  gushed 
forth. 

"Let  your  Cross  be  the  means  of  my 
torture,  Lord  God  of  Mercy." 

Sinking,  she  fell,  overwhelmed  at  her 
sin  and  at  the  fear  of  eternal  damnation. 


[120] 


VI 


WHEN  Lasthenie  recovered  con- 
sciousness, her  mother  was  lying 
on  the  floor,  her  face  gkied  to  the  cruci- 
fix. The  movement  the  girl  made,  the 
moan  which  she  uttered  in  coming  to, 
aroused  the  mother  from  her  prostra- 
tion, and  drawing  herself  up  to  her  full 
height,  she  towered  over  her  daughter, 
her  forehead  still  bleeding. 

"You  shall  tell  me  all,"  she  declared, 
imperiously.  "I  insist  on  knowing. 
Tell  me,  and  at  once,  to  whom,  in  this 
solitude  where  we  live — live  like  re- 
cluses— and  where  there  is  not  a  man  of 
your  station — to  whom  have  you  given 

yourself?" 

[121] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Again  Lasthenie  moaned;  yet,  too 
weak  to  answer,  she  stared,  haggardly, 
with  the  stupidity  of  astonishment. 

"There!  I  have  had  enough  of 
comedy,  enough  of  your  silence,  enough 
of  your  lies.  Don't  pretend  that  you  do 
not  understand  me,  for  you  do,"  con- 
tinued the  mother,  who  was  no  longer  a 
mother,  but  a  judge,  and  a  judge  pre- 
pared to  become  an  executioner. 

Insulted  in  her  modesty  and  inno- 
cence, revolting  at  so  much  cruelty  and 
blind  injustice,  the  poor  girl  sobbed  in 
agony. 

''Mother,  mother,"  she  implored, 
''what  is  it  you  wish  me  to  say?  What 
are  you  angry  at?  What  have  I  done? 
I  don't  rmderstand  at  all  what  you  mean 
except  that  it  is  something  dreadful. 
You   are   killing  me;   I    shall   lose   my 

[122] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

senses;  and  with  your  horrible  expres- 
sions and  your  bleeding  forehead,  you 
seem  to  have  lost  them  yourself." 

Violently,  with  the  back  of  her  hand, 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  wiped  her  forehead. 

"Let  it  bleed,"  she  interrupted.  "If 
it  bleeds,  it  is  for  you,  ungrateful  child. 
But  don't  tell  me  that  you  don't  under- 
stand. It  is  a  lie.  You  know  well 
enough  what  is  the  matter  with  you. 
All  women  do;  merely  on  seeing  each 
other  they  know.  I  am  not  a  bit  sur- 
prised that  you  refused  to  confess  the 
other  night." 

At  last  the  enervated  girl  grasped  the 
full  portent  and  infamy  of  the  accusa- 
tion. 

"Mother,"  she  moaned,  "you  know 
what  you  say  is  impossible.  I  am  ill,  I 
am    suffering,    but    my    illness    is    not 

[123] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

caused  by  the  horrible  thing  you 
imagine.  I  see  no  one  but  you  and 
Agathe;  I  never  leave  you." 

"You  go  to  v^alk  alone  on  the  moun- 
tain," Mme.  de  Ferjol,  with  a  look  of 
atrocious  penetration,  insinuated. 

In  the  degradation  of  such  a  suspicion 
Lasthenie  clasped  her  hands.  "Mother, 
you  kill  me.  Angels  of  heaven,  be 
merciful  to  me!  You  at  least  know 
what  I  am!" 

"Don't  invoke  the  angels;  3^ou  have 
driven  them  away;  they  no  longer  hear 
you,"  said  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  blindly  in- 
credulous of  the  innocence  which  pro- 
claimed itself  with  such  despairing 
candor.  Continuing  more  violently 
than  before:  "Don't  add  sacrilege  to 
your  falsehood,"  she  cried;  and  brutally 
added:  "You  are  lost,  you  are  dishon- 
ored; deny  it  or  not,  it  is  the  same  in 

[124] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

the  end;  you  are  dishonored,  you  are 
lost.  But  by  whom?  Tell  me  at  once 
who  it  is.  Who  is  it?  Who  is  it?"  she 
repeated;  and  seizing  the  girl  by  the 
shoulder  she  shook  her  so  cruelly  that 
she  threw  her  back  on  the  pillow. 
There  the  poor  child  lay,  whiter  than 
the  pillow  itself. 

She  had  fainted  again,  but  Mme.  de 
Ferjol  was  as  unmoved  by  the  second 
swoon  as  by  the  first.  She  had  asked 
God's  forgiveness  for  her  daughter's 
sin  and  her  own  lack  of  vigilance,  and 
in  her  anger  was  capable  of  trampling 
the  girl  under  her  feet. 

Seated  at  the  bedside  of  the  child 
whom  twice  she  had  turned  into  a 
corpse,  she  let  her  recover  her  senses  as 
best  she  might.  The  pride  which  re- 
ligion had  not  conquered  rebelled  in 
her  heart  at  the  insupportable  idea  that 

[125] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

a  man,  an  unknown,  one  of  the  lower 
classes  no  doubt,  had  clandestinely  dis- 
honored her  daughter.  The  name  of 
that  man  she  wanted. 

When  Lasthenie  opened  her  eyes, 
she  saw  her  mother  bending  over  her 
as  though  she  were  seeking  that  name 
on  her  lips. 

''His  name,  his  name!"  she  called,  her 
eyes  flashing  with  a  devouring  glare. 
"Ah,  hypocrite!  I'll  tear  that  accursed 
name  from  you  if  I  have  to  dig  it,  with 
your  child,  from  your  entrails." 

But  Lasthenie,  overwhelmed  by  all 
the  abominations  of  the  night,  instead 
of  answering  her  mother,  gazed  at  her 
through  two  big,  empty  eyes  that 
seemed  to  be  dead. 

And  they  were  dead,  those  beautiful 
eyes  and  so  remained  forever  without  a 
glimmer  through  the  tears  of  which  they 

[126] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

shed  torrents.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  learned 
nothing  from  her  daughter  that  night, 
nor  did  she  learn  anything  from  her 
later  on.  But  it  was  with  that  night 
for  starting-point  that  they  entered 
into  the  infernal  life  which  thereafter 
they  led,  one  that  is  without  parallel  in 
the  somberest  situations  of  tragedy. 
From  that  time  it  became  really  a  story 
without  a  name,  a  drama,  suffocating 
and  suffocated,  between  two  women  of 
the  same  blood,  who  loved  each  other 
nevertheless,  who  had  never  been  sepa- 
rated, but  of  whom,  in  the  bonds  of  con- 
fidence, one  had  never  been  a  mother, 
nor  the  other  a  child. 

It  was  a  drama  soul  to  soul,  deep- 
reaching,  prolonged,  mysterious,  one  in 
which  the  mystery  had  to  be  increased 
that  Agathe  might  not  know  of  the  ig- 
nominy   which    Mme.    de    Ferjol    was 

[127] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

more  anxious  even  than  her  daughter  to 
hide;  for  at  that  time  Lasthenie  did  not 
beHeve  what  her  mother  had  said.  In 
the  novelty  of  her  sensations  she 
thought  herself  attacked  by  some  un- 
familiar complaint,  that  her  symptoms 
w^ere  deceptive,  that  the  error  of  her 
mother  was  monstrous,  a  thing  to  be 
rebelled  against;  yet,  as  she  writhed 
beneath  the  insult,  the  dishonoring  blow 
did  not  make  her  bend  the  head;  hers 
was  the  sublime  obstinacy  of  innocence ; 
and  because  she  did  not  resemble  her 
mother  who  in  her  place  would  have 
roared  like  a  lioness,  she  said  to  her, 
with  the  gentleness  of  a  lamb  that  lets 
its  throat  be  cut: 

"Some  day  how  sorry  you  will  be  to 
have  made  me  suffer  so!" 

But  the  day  of  which  she  spoke  never 

came.     Yet  many  were  the  days  that 

[128] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

came  to  that  pitiless  mother  who  would 
not  forgive,  who  never  spoke  of  forgiv- 
ing, and  to  that  girl  who  staked  her 
honor  on  remaining  unforgiven.  The 
days  passed,  long,  despairful,  black. 
Only  there  was  one  more  despairful  than 
the  others,  one  that  Lasthenie  had  not 
expected,  one  in  which  the  interior 
shiver  of  the  child,  announcing  its  life, 
told  her  that  it  was  she  and  not  her 
mother  who  was  wrong. 

They  were  sitting  as  usual  in  front 
of  each  other  in  the  embrasure  of  the 
window,  devoured  equally  by  the  same 
dumb  pain,  their  feverish  hands  at  work. 
A  ray  of  the  sun  entered  like  wind 
through  a  hole — that  hole  above  them 
which  the  peaks  of  the  mountains  made 
— and  in  the  gloomy  room  dropped  on 
their  necks  a  guillotine  of  light. 

Suddenly,  with   an   involuntary   cry, 

[  129  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Lasthenie  put  her  hand  to  her  side.  At 
the  cry,  and  still  more  at  sight  of  the 
inexpressible  desolation  which  swept 
over  her  face,  already  profoundly  dis- 
consolate, her  mother,  who  seemed  to 
read  through  her,  instantly  understood. 

"You  felt  it,  didn't  you?"  she  hissed. 
"You  are  sure  at  last.  You  won't  say 
no  to  me  any  more — that  stupid  no  of 
yours.  It  is  here,  isn't  it?"  and  she 
placed  her  hand  where  Lasthenie  had 
her  own.  "But  who  put  it  there?  Tell 
me,  I  insist." 

With  the  eternal  question  once  more 
she  stabbed  her  daughter,  and  the  latter, 
overcome  now  as  with  a  lightning- 
stroke  by  the  sudden  revelation  which 
showed  her  mother  to  be  right,  utterly 
undone  by  the  certainty  of  her  misfor- 
tune, shook  her  head  wildly,  and  an- 
swered that  she  did  not  know;  an  in- 

[130] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

excusable  reply  that  angered  her  mother 
as  nothing  had  angered  her  before. 

Thus  far  Mme.  de  Ferjol  had  imagined 
it  was  shame  that  sealed  her  daughter's 
lips.  But  the  shame  had  been  drunk. 
There  was  no  motive  now  for  further 
concealment. 

"If  you  won't  tell  me,"  she  announced, 
measuredly,  ''it  is  because  there  is  some- 
thing more  shameful  than  your  own 
shamelessness — your  shame  of  the  man 
to  whom  you  gave  yourself." 

The  suspicion  that  had  come  to  her 
before  concerning  the  Capuchin  re- 
turned, not  as  it  had  to  Agathe,  who  be- 
lieved in  spells,  but  as  it  might  to  a 
woman  like  herself,  who  believed  in  the 
sorceries  of  love,  and  who  had  been  a 
victim  of  them.  But  that  suspicion  of  a 
crime  which  to  her  was  the  greatest  of 
all,  since  a  priest  was  the  culprit,  she 

[131] 


The  Stori)  Without  a  Name 

put  from  her,  but  more  out  of  respect 
for  the  character  of  the  man  of  God  than 
through  any  faith  in  the  innocence  of 
her  daughter.  Her  own  experience  had 
taught  her  what  a  fragile  thing  virtue  is. 
Yet,  afraid  in  her  frightened  anxiety  to 
utter  the  suspicion  that  tortured  her, 
she  began  again  with  her  eternal  ques- 
tions to  massacre  the  despairful  girl,  al- 
ready half  killed  by  her  incomprehen- 
sible condition.  But  in  vain;  Lasthe- 
nie  made  no  other  answer  than  that  of 
silence  and  of  tears. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  not  a  woman  to 
be  disarmed  or  outwearied.  Lasthe- 
nie's  silence  and  tireless  tears  were 
interrupted  with  the  indefatigable  blows 
of  questionings.  Whenever  they  were 
alone  the  torture  recommenced,  and  at 
present  they  were  almost  always  alone. 
Their  lifelong  tete-a-tete  became  more 

[132] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

absolute  than  it  had  ever  been.  The 
emptiness  of  their  great  house  and  the 
jostling  mountains  seemed  to  unite  in 
an  effort  to  bring  them  into  stricter  in- 
timacy than  before.  Formerly,  when 
Agathe  had  finished  her  work,  she 
joined  the  Ladies  de  Ferjol  in  the  room 
where  they  passed  the  monotonous  rou- 
tine of  their  existence.  There  she  sat 
and  knitted.  But  since  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
had  learned  the  secret  of  Lasthenie's  dis- 
order, she  used  the  first  pretext  that 
came  to  her  to  keep  Agathe  out  of  the 
way.  She  feared  her  keen  eyes,  and 
she  feared  too  the  tears  that  her  daugh- 
ter could  not  stanch,  and  which  flowed 
hour-long  on  her  hands  as  she  worked. 
"For  shame's  sake,"  she  admonished 
her  once  when  the  servant  was  not  pres- 
ent, "don't  cry  before  Agathe.  You  are 
able  to  hold  your  tongue;  you  should 

[133] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

be  able  to  contain  yourself.  For  all 
your  dainty  airs,  you  are  strong  enough. 
Your  health  may  be  poor,  but  vice  has 
given  you  strength.  I  am  only  your 
mother;  your  sin  I  share,  since  I  could 
not  prevent  you  from  committing  it,  but 
Agathe  is  a  respectable  woman,  and  if 
she  merely  suspected  v^^hat  I  knov^  she 
would  despise  you." 

On  that  point  she  insisted  constantly, 
and  made  use  of  a  servant's  scorn  not 
only  to  humiliate  Lasthenie  still  more, 
but  through  its  repetition  to  force  the 
girl  to  tell  that  name  which  she  would 
not  ^give.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  well- 
versed  in  invective,  and  were  it  possible 
it  would  have  gladdened  her  to  find 
something  lower  than  a  servant's  con- 
tempt to  hurl  in  her  daughter's  face. 

Agathe  adored  Lasthenie,  and  had  the 
hideous  truth  been  told  her,  there  would 

[134] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

have  been  no  scorn  in  her  heart.  Scorn 
to  the  proud  is  what  pity  is  to  the  lowly, 
and  in  Agathe's  soul  was  a  tenderness 
that  years  had  not  altered.  Lasthenie 
was  well  aware  of  that. 

"Agathe  is  not  like  my  mother,"  she 
told  herself;  "she  would  not  despise  me, 
she  would  not  reproach  me;  she  would 
pity  me." 

And,  in  the  misfortune  that  over- 
whelmed her,  time  and  again  she  longed 
to  throw  herself  in  the  arms  of  one  who 
had  been  her  nurse,  the  confidante  of 
her  childhood's  griefs.  But  her  mother 
prevented  her.  Mme.  de  Ferjol's  as- 
cendancy over  her  daughter  had  always 
been  irresistible,  but  latterly  it  had  be- 
come terrifying.  When  Agathe  was 
present  she  medusa'd  the  girl  with  her 
eyes;  and  as  for  Agathe,  when  she 
looked  over  her  spectacles  at  the  two 

[135] 


The  Story  Without  a  Najjie 

women  who  in  their  silent  desolation 
sat  facing  each  other,  needle  in  hand,  she 
did  not  dare  to  utter  a  word.  Her  opin- 
ion had  not  changed,  but  since  Mme.  de 
Ferjol  had  shrugged  her  shoulders  at 
it,  she  kept  it  to  herself.  By  way  of 
explanation  of  the  pallor,  the  fainting 
fits,  and  tears  of  the  girl,  whom  the 
mother  said  was  nervous,  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol had  invented  a  complaint  of  which 
the  local  physician,  in  his  ignorance, 
understood  nothing,  but  for  which  she 
had  prescriptions  sent  her  from  Paris. 

It  was  easier,  after  all,  to  keep  Las- 
thenie  out  of  the  way  of  a  physician  who 
would  have  known  what  was  the  matter 
the  moment  he  looked  at  her,  than  to 
separate  her  from  Agathe. 

But  then,  she  reflected,  was  it  pos- 
sible to  conceal  Lasthenie's  condition 
much  longer?     It  was  terrible  enough 

[136] 


The  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

as  it  was,  but  would  not  the  symptoms 
become  presently  so  marked  that  even 
Agathe,  whose  innocence  made  her 
blind,  would  see  them?  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol  thought  of  these  things,  of  others  as 
well,  and  for  the  moment  she  wondered 
whether  it  might  not  be  better  to  sup- 
press Agathe,  and,  despite  her  affection 
and  devotion,  send  her  back  to  Nor- 
mandy. In  that  event  the  very  fact  of 
dismissing  Agathe  would  relieve  her  of 
any  outward  need  of  another  servant. 
The  neighbors  were  respectful  indeed, 
but  they  were  inquisitive  and  malicious. 
Once  guarded  against  their  gossip,  she 
and  her  daughter  could  live  alone  in  the 
servantless  house  like  two  souls  in  some 
pit  of  hell.  That  was  her  perspective. 
But  the  horrible  problem  that  she  con- 
stantly propounded  was  how  she  was 
to  act  later  on.     As  yet  she  could  form 

[137] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

no  decision.  Though  she  never  now 
spoke  to  her  daughter,  except  to  ask 
the  eternal  question  which  still  re- 
mained unanswered,  she  too  shrank 
from  an  avowal  that  dishonored  the 
name  that  she  bore  so  proudly,  and  to 
herself  she  kept  repeating,  "What  shall 
I  do?     What  shall  I  do?" 

Day  in,  day  out,  at  every  moment, 
even  while  she  prayed,  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
put  to  herself  that  question.  She 
thought  of  it  at  church,  before  the 
tabernacle,  before  the  communion-table, 
which  she  had  forsaken.  Jansenist  that 
she  was,  she  believed  that  since  her 
child's  sin  she  had  ceased  to  be  worthy 
to  approach  it.  At  all  times  and  places 
she  was  the  prey  of  the  problem  and  of 
the  uncertainty  which  was  eating  her 
life.  Her  anxiety  was  such  that  it  made 
her  head  swim,  and  that  anxiety,  joined 

[138] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

to  the  inconsolable  grief  of  her  daugh- 
ter's fall,  made  her  treat  the  latter  with 
an  anger  and  a  resentment  that  were 
well-nigh  ferocious. 

Yet  still  the  greater  sufferer  was  Las- 
thenie.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  certainly 
most  miserable.  She  suffered  in  her 
motherly  and  womanly  pride,  in  her 
conscience,  and  even  in  that  strength  for 
which  we  pay  atrociously  high;  for  the 
psychologically  strong  have  neither  the 
relief  nor  the  sedative  of  tears;  their 
sobs  are  suffocated.  Nevertheless  she 
was  a  mother,  injured  and  insulted,  and 
Lasthenie  was  but  her  daughter,  the  ob- 
ject of  her  eternal  reproach,  the  victim 
whom  sh6  crushed  with  the  now  un- 
deniable evidence  of  a  sin  which  she 
called  a  crime.  In  the  abominable  in- 
timacy that  existed  between  them, 
surely  then  it  was  Lasthenie  who  suf- 

[139] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

fered  most.  In  unhappiness  there  is  a 
moment,  similar  to  that  which  comes  in 
happiness,  when  there  is  no  longer  a 
possible  chronicle,  when  that  which  is 
untenable  is  left  to  the  imagination  to 
divine.  To  Lasthenie  that  moment 
had  come.  She  was  unrecognizably 
changed,  to  such  a  degree  that  those 
who  had  thought  her  charming  would 
never  have  believed  that  this  was  what 
was  left  of  the  fair  demoiselle  de  Ferjol. 
She  frightened,  all  lily  of  the  valley 
th^t  she  was.  The  Rosalind  of  Shaks- 
pere  had  gone,  and  with  her  the  pal- 
lor she  had  had,  and  which  is  the 
beauty  of  tender  hearts.  She  was  but 
a  sallow  mummy,  a  strange  mummy  too, 
one  that  continually  wept,  and  whose 
flesh,  instead  of  withering,  grew  softer, 
bruised  and  rottened  with   tears.     She 

suffered  horribly,  and  it  was  pitiful  to 

[140] 


TJie  Story  Without  a  Naine 

see  her  drag  her  weighted  waist  about. 
She  would  have  hid  it  perpetually  in  the 
floating  folds  of  her  peignoir.  But  that 
her  mother  would  not  permit.  She 
forced  her  to  church,  thinking  no  doubt 
that  its  influence  would  do  her  good, 
that  it  would  be  of  benefit  to  her  wicked 
heart,  and  force  from  it  perhaps  the  se- 
cret that  it  held. 

"You  are  not  ill  enough  yet,"  she 
would  say,  with  scornful  severity.  "In 
God's  holy  house  you  must  ask  His  for- 
giveness." 

To  take  her  there,  it  was  she  who 
dressed  her,  not  Agathe.  It  was  she 
who,  as  they  left  the  house,  wrapped  her 
daughter's  head  in  a  thick  veil,  to  hide 
what  she  had  seen,  a  veil  so  thick  that 
the  girl  might  have  smothered  in  it,  a 
veil  that  would  have  concealed  leprosy 
itself.     But   it  was   not   the  face  alone 

[141] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

that  had  to  be  concealed;  there  was  the 
waist,  which  would  have  told  the  story 
to  the  least  observing;  and  to  prevent 
that,  she  laced  Lasthenie's  corset  her- 
self, tightly,  so  that  it  hurt.  Some- 
times, under  the  pressure  of  her  mother's 
hand,  involuntarily  the  girl  would  groan, 
whereat  the  mother,  exasperated  at  the 
obstinate  silence  which  withheld  that 
name,  would  hiss  in  her  ear  that  those 
who  sin  must  suffer. 

"Perhaps  you  are  afraid  I  will  kill  it," 
she  said  once,  when  the  girl  seemed  to 
suffer  from  the  lacing  more  than  before. 
"You  needn't;  the  children  of  crime  are 
strong." 


[142] 


VII 

IN  the  midst  of  these  ferocities  there 
came  a  moment  when  the  mother, 
outraged  indeed,  but  yet  not  wholly 
pitiless,  stopped  the  torture  she  was  in- 
flicting on  her  child.  It  may  be  she  felt 
that,  however  culpable  the  girl  might  be, 
she  herself  was  going  too  far.  It  may 
be  that  she  was  touched  at  the  sight  of 
a  face  that  had  been  delicious,  but 
which  was  now  but  a  faded  flower;  or, 
again,  it  may  have  been  but  a  ruse  on 
her  part  to  surprise  the  secret  which 
that  fragile  girl  had  the  strength  to 
keep  hidden. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  knew  what  love  is. 
"She   must   love   him  madly,"   she   de- 

[  143  1 


The  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

cided;  and  she  changed  her  tactics. 
The  ferocity  vanished;  she  became 
tender  and  motherly. 

''Lasthenie,  my  child,"  she  said,  one 
day,  "listen  to  me;  you  are  killing  your- 
self with  grief,  and  you  are  killing  me; 
you  are  damning  your  own  soul,  and 
you  are  damning  mine.  Concealment 
is  falsehood,  and  in  the  humiliating 
comedy  I  play  to  hide  your  shame  I 
share  that  falsehood  with  you.  A 
word  from  you  would  replace  you,  per- 
haps, in  the  arms  of  him  whom  you  love. 
Tell  me  his  name.  Perhaps  he  is  not  so 
low  but  that  you  may  marry  him.  Las- 
thenie,  my  dear  Lasthenie,  I  am  sorry 
I  have  been  so  hard  with  you.  I  had 
not  the  right  to  be  so,  I  have  never 
told  of  myself.  You,  like  everyone  else, 
know  but  one  thing  of  me,  that  I  adored 
your  father  and  eloped  with  him;  but 

[144] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

you  do  not  know,  nor  does  anyone  else, 
that  I,  like  you,  my  poor  child,  was  cul- 
pable and  weak.  When  I  was  married 
I  was  in  the  same  condition  that  you 
are.  In  the  happiness  of  my  marriage, 
the  weakness  was  hid;  I  blushed  at  it, 
but  to  God  alone.  Your  sin,  perhaps, 
is  the  punishment  and  expiation  of  my 
own.  God  has  terrible  retaliations.  I 
married  your  father;  he  was  my  divin- 
ity; but  God  is  a  jealous  God.  He  will 
have  no  one  preferred  to  Him,  and  He 
punished  me  in  taking  my  husband 
away,  and  in  making  you  repeat  what  I 
did.  Now,  why  should  you  not  marry 
the  man  you  love? — for  you  do  love 
him.  If  you  did  not  adore  him  as  I 
adored  your  father,  you  would  not  con- 
ceal his  name." 

She  stopped.     The  effort  to  say  what 
she  had  must  have  been  immense,  but 

[145] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

she  said  it.  She  had  not  recoiled  before 
the  humihation  of  admitting  her  parity 
to  her  daughter.  It  was  her  last  re- 
source, the  ultimate  hope  of  earning  the 
secret  she  burned  to  know. 

But  the  effort  was  futile.  Lasthenie 
remained  unmoved.  Broken  in  spirit, 
outworn  by  useless  denials,  she  listened 
to  her  mother,  as  she  listened  now  to 
ever3^thing,  without  answering  a  word. 
To  her  mother's  reproaches,  to  her  ob- 
jurgations and  anger,  she  had  become 
insensible  as  a  corpse.  The  confession 
affected  her  as  little  as  the  abuse  had 
done.  Whether  or  not  she  remained 
silent  because  of  her  present  inability  to 
prove  her  innocence,  who  shall  say? 
But  one  thing  is  certain,  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol's  sudden  tenderness,  the  appealing 
confession    which    she    had    made,    the 

endeavor  to  obtain  the  girl's  confidence 

[146] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

by  means  of  an  avowal  which  placed 
them  both  on  the  same  footing,  came  too 
late.  Besides,  the  girl's  incomprehen- 
sible condition  and  the  anguish  of  it  had 
made  her  almost  an  idiot.  For  a  long 
time  she  had  believed  that  something 
else  was  the  matter  with  her.  She  re- 
membered the  torture  inflicted  on  an 
unfortunate  girl  in  the  neighborhood 
who  was  thought  to  be  enceinte,  and 
who  remained,  long  after  the  natural 
time,  enceinte  with  a  horrible  tumor. 
Lasthenie — and  here  is  the  tragedy  of 
it  all — Lasthenie  had  hoped  for  a  tumor 
as  she  hoped  for  God. 

"It  will  be  my  revenge,"  she  thought.    • 

But    that    hope    she    had    lost.     She 

could  doubt  no  longer.     The  child  had 

moved  within  her,  .and  in  moving  had 

awaked  in  her  heart  something  which 

perhaps  was  maternal  love. 

[147] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

''Won't  you  speak  now,  Lasthenie?" 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  continued,  caressingly. 
"Won't  you  speak  to  me  as  freely  as  I 
have  spoken  to  you?  You  should  not 
be  afraid  of  a  mother  who  has  been  as 
weak  as  you;  and  who  can  save  you,"  she 
added,  "in  giving  you  to  him  whom  you 
love." 

But  even  physically  Lasthenie  did  not 
seem  to  hear.  She  was  deaf;  she  was 
dumb.  Her  mother  watched  her,  ready 
to  inhale  the  answer  that  did  not  come. 

"My  little  girl,  do  be  good;  tell  me 
who  it  is."  Mme.  de  Ferjol  took  one  of 
Lasthenie's  inert  hands  in  her  own  and 
tried  to  draw  her  daughter  to  her.  But 
that  also  must  have  come  too  late. 

They  were  sitting  then  in  the  em- 
brasure of  the  window  where  they  al- 
ways sat.  The  girdling  mountains  that 
shadowed     the     house     increased     the 

[148] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

dreariness  of  the  room,  and  against  the 
brown  oak  that  covered  the  walls  Las- 
thenie  was  as  white  as  a  plaster  medal- 
lion. Mme.  de  Ferjol  bent  sadly  over 
her  needle,  but  Lasthenie's  work  had 
fallen  from  her  discouraged  hands;  she 
sat  upright,  motionless  as  a  statue — 
a  statue  of  infinite  desolation.  Her 
lovely  eyes,  once  so  fresh  and  pure,  were 
ruined  by  tears.  There  were  red  circles 
about  them  which  the  burn  of  the  tears 
had  made  and  kept  there;  and  the  eyes 
themselves,  which  had  begun  to  chafe 
as  though  it  were  blood  that  they  had 
shed,  expressed  nothing,  not  even  de- 
spair. Lasthenie  was  about  to  pass  into 
something  deeper  than  the  abstraction 
of  a  lunatic,  she  was  falling  into  the  va- 
cancy of  idiocy. 

With  a  pity  into  which  terror  mingled, 
the  mother  contemplated   the  disaster 

[149] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

of  her  daughter's  face.  She  had  never 
told  her  she  was  pretty;  the  austerity  of 
her  creed  prevented  anything  w^hich 
might  tend  to  exalt  a  personal  pride; 
but  at  heart  she  had  been  glad  of  the 
girl's  good-looks.  Nov^,  though  her  ap- 
pearance broke  her  heart,  she  could  see 
the  hideousness  of  idiocy  forming  it,  a 
death  in  life.  Many  believe  that  the 
body  dies  before  the  soul  takes  flight, 
but  there  are  instances  in  v^Ahich  life  re- 
mains long  after  the  soul  has  departed. 

Night  overtook  them  where  they  sat. 

"Come  and  pray  God  to  unseal  your 
heart  and  lips,  and  give  you  the  strength 
to  speak,"  said  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  at  last. 

Indifferent  to  God  as  to  everything 
else,  Lasthenie  remained  seated.  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  was  obliged  to  take  her  by  the 
wrist,  upon  which,  automatically,  the 
girl  yielded. 

[150] 


The  Story  Without  a  Navie 

Suddenly  the  mother  raised  the  girt's 
hand.  ''What  is  this?"  she  cried. 
"Have  you  lost  your  father's  ring,  or  do 
you  think  yourself  no  longer  worthy  to 
wear  it?" 

The  misfortune  that  had  overwhelmed 
these  two  women  was  so  vast  that 
neither  of  them  had  noticed  that  the 
ring  was  missing. 

Lasthenie,  who  had  ceased  to  under- 
stand anything,  looked  at  her  hand  and 
stretched  the  fingers  as  a  lunatic  might 
have  done. 

"Have  I  lost  it?"  she  murmured. 
She  spoke  as  though  she  were  issuing 
from  a  dream. 

"Yes,"    answered    Mme.    de    Ferjol, 

whose  eyes  had  become  black  again  and 

implacable — "yes,  it  is  lost  as  you  are. 

You  gave  it  to  him  to  whom  you  gave 

yourself." 

[151] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

'At  once  the  tenderness  vanished. 
The  loss  of  her  husband's  ring  seemed 
worse  than*  the  loss  of  her  daughter's 
honor. 

That  evening  and  the  day  after 
Agathe  searched  for  the  ring  every- 
w^here.  Lasthenie's  hand  had  become 
so  thin  that  it  might  easily  have  slipped 
from  her  unnoticed;  but  the  ring  was 
not  found,  a  fact  which  prevented 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  from  again  feeling  the 
slightest  compassion.  From  then  on 
she  became  frankly  cruel. 

That  evening  the  church  was  neg- 
lected. Had  they  gone  there  Mme.  de 
Ferjol  would  have  taken  with  her  the 
suspicion  that  had  haunted  her  at  in- 
tervals, a  suspicion  which  by  reason  of 
her  daughter's  invincible  silence  held 
her  like  a  vise. 

Since  she  will  not  tell  me  his  name, 

[152] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

she  reflected,  it  is  because  she  cannot 
marry  him;  and  immediately  the 
thought  of  that  frightful  Capuchin, 
whose  name  she  would  not  have  dared 
to  utter  to  her  daughter,  nor  even  to  her- 
self, sprang  at  her.  Even  the  letters  of 
the  name  alarmed  her,  and  to  assemble 
those  letters  and  pronounce  them  in  a 
whisper  seemed  to  her  a  sacrilege.  For 
it  was  a  sacrilege  to  think  ill  of  a  priest 
who,  while  he  dwelled  at  her  side  had 
appeared,  irreproachable.  That  which 
made  her  tremble  to  think  of,  but  of 
which  she  thought  nevertheless,  might 
have  seemed  possible  to  another,  yet 
never  to  her. 

"Dear  Lord,"  she  cried,  in  her  prayers, 
"let  it  not  be  he." 

Besides,  she  reasoned  with  herself, 
when  could  this  crime  against  God  and 
her    daughter    have    been    committed? 

[153] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

He  had  never  seen  either  of  the  two 
women  in  the  absence  of  the  other.  He 
had  turned  his  room  into  a  cell,  and  save 
at  meal-time  never  left  it.  It  was  ab- 
surd therefore  to  imagine  what  she  did. 
And  yet,  in  spite  of  its  evident  absurd- 
ity, the  suspicion  which  she  banished  as 
a  suggestion  from  hell  returned  always 
and  more  infernally  insistent  than  be- 
fore. It  possessed  her,  hallucinating 
her  with  terrifying  visions,  and  plung- 
ing her  into  silences  as  deep  as  those  of 
Lasthenie;  and  did  she  by  any  chance 
turn  for  a  moment  from  the  absorbing 
abstraction  of  which  she  vainly  prayed 
God  to  deliver  her,  at  once  there  surged 
before  her  another  vision,  as  powerful 
and  imperious  as  the  former,  the  vision 
of  fleeting  time ! 

It  was  fleeting  indeed,  pitilessly  even, 
and   presently  it  would   tell   the   entire 

[154] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

hamlet  of  the  shame  of  the  Ladies  de 
Ferjol.  There  was  but  one  thing  left 
for  them,  to  go  away  and  disappear. 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  saw  no  one,  but  one 
morning,  as  Agathe  was  on  her  way  to 
market,  she  told  her  to  say  that  all  three 
were  to  return  to  Normandy.  The 
prospect  not  only  of  leaving  the  hole  in 
which  for  nineteen  years  she  had  suf- 
focated, but  of  again  feasting  her  eyes 
on  her  native  pasture  lands,  was  the  one 
thing  calculated  to  make  Agathe  a  little 
less  unhappy.  Lasthenie's  condition, 
which  she  still  believed  the  work  of  the 
demon,  had  made  her  wild  with  grief, 
the  more  so  because  she  felt  there  could 
be  no  remedy  against  it.  But  the  good 
news  cheered  her  a  little.  A  change  of 
air,  Mme.  de  Ferjol  said,  had  become 
necessary  to  Lasthenie,  and  what  air 
could  be  better  than  that  of  Normandy? 

[  155  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

These  explanations,  which  covered  the 
real  one,  Agathe  neither  discussed  nor 
examined;  she  accepted  them  with  joy 
and  confidence.  She  was  homesick  for 
her  native  land.  But  from  her,  as  from 
everyone  else,  Mme.  de  Ferjol  wished 
to  guard  her  daughter's  secret.  For 
that  matter  it  was  her  own  as  well.  In 
her  conscience  she  felt  that  Lasthenie's 
condition  dishonored  her  as  much  as  it 
did  her  child;  and  to  conceal  that  dis- 
honor there  was  nothing  of  which  she 
had  not  thought  save  an  act  which,  in 
the  present  state  of  our  miserable  lives, 
might  readily  be  called  the  crime  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  Mme.  de  Ferjol 
was  too  upright,  too  religious,  to  con- 
sider even  for  a  moment's  space  any  of 
the  forms  of  infanticide. 

Save    that,     Mme.     de     Ferjol     had 

knocked    against    every    angle    of    the 

[156] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

terrible  question.  Plan  after  plan  she 
made  and  relinquished.  She  thought 
of  losing  herself  and  her  daughter  in  the 
immensity  of  Paris,  and  she  thought  too 
of  taking  her  to  some  foreign  city. 
She  was  rich,  and  with  money,  every- 
thing, even  to  appearances,  may  be 
saved.  But  what  excuse  had  she  for 
going  off  with  a  sick  daughter  no  one 
knew  whither,  and  leaving  behind  an 
old  and  devoted  servant,  one  who  had 
accompanied  her  at  the  time  of  her 
scandalous  elopement,  and  from  whom, 
out  of  gratitude,  she  had  then  sworn 
never  to  part,  happen  what  might? 

Besides,  the  adoption  of  such  a  plan 
would  certainly  have  made  Agathe  sus- 
pect the  shame  of  a  girl  whom  all  her 
Hfe  she  had  believed  an  angel  of  inno- 
cence and  purity;  and  that,  Mme.  de 
Ferjol  wished  at  any  cost  to  avoid.     It 

[157] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

was  then  the  idea  occurred  to  her  of  re- 
turning to  Normandy.  After  twenty 
years  of  absence  she  felt  that  she  must 
be  entirely  forgotten,  that  those  whom 
she  had  known  in  her  youth  had  either 
died  or  departed.  Then,  too,  the  plan 
had  another  advantage:  Agathe  would 
be  too  occupied  with  her  recovered  home 
to  discover  the  secret  which  was  to  die 
between  her  daughter  and  herself. 

The  solitude  to  which  she  looked  for- 
ward was  of  a  different  kind  from  that 
which  the  hamlet  offered.  In  Nor- 
mandy she  would  not  live  in  either  a 
city  or  a  village,  but  in  her  own  old 
Chateau  d'Olonde,  a  castle  situated  in  a 
corner  of  the  unfrequented  tract  that 
lies  between  the  Channel  coast  and  the 
peninsula  of  Cotentin.  At  that  time 
there  was  no  highway  there.  The  castle 
was  protected  by  the  wretchedness  of 

[158] 


Tlie  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

the  cross-roads,  and,  during  a  part  of 
the  year,  by  the  southwest  winds,  which 
blew  the  rain  upon  it  as  on  the  home  of 
some  misanthrope  built  behind  inac- 
cessible by-paths.  It  was  there,  like 
moles,  that  these  two  Shames  could 
hide. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  had  resolved  that  even 
on  the*  fatal  day  no  physician  should  be 
called.  Her  own  hands  would  suffice, 
she  told  herself;  and  each  time  she  did 
a  shiver  caught  her,  and  from  the  depths 
of  her  heroic  and  miserable  being  a  voice 
cried: 

"But  afterwards?  What  of  the  child? 
Must  you  not  hide  it  too  as  you  hide  the 
mother?" 

Then  at  once  she  would  begin  again 
at  the  problem  which  strangled  her  like 
a  noose.  But  there  was  no  time  to  be 
lost.     It    was   impossible    to  wait    any 

[1591 


The  Story  Witkotit  a  Name 

longer;  there  was  but  one  thing  to  be 
done — to  get  away  from  the  hamlet  that 
stared  in  her  face.  Whereupon  Mme. 
de  Ferjol,  with  that  feeling  common  to 
those  who  anticipate  a  calamity  that 
they  cannot  avert,  consoled  herself  as 
best  she  might  in  the  hope  that  at  the 
last  moment  something  would  occur  to 
save  her,  and  threw  herself,  with  her 
daughter,  into  the  postchaise  that  car- 
ried them  off. 


[160] 


VIII 

THIS  nameless  story  of  a  mysterious 
domestic  tragedy  which  fell,  no 
one  knew  whence  or,  how,  on  two 
women,  who  while  hid  in  the  shadow  of 
a  cistern  were  yet  visible  to  the  eye  of 
Fate,  occurred  coincidentally  with  the 
formation  of  another  shadow,  one  that 
mingled  with  and  darkened  the  first — 
the  shadow  of  the  crater  that  suddenly 
opened  beneath  the  feet  of  France. 

When  Mme.  de  Ferjol  left  her  ham- 
let the  French  Revolution  had  begun, 
but  it  was  not  sufficiently  advanced  to 
interfere,  as  it  would  have  later,  with 
the  journey  she  was  taking.  That  jour- 
ney was  long  and  painful.     Lasthenie 

[161] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

suffered  horribly.  The  roads  were  not 
then  what  they  have  since  become,  and 
the  jolting  postchaise  tortured  her  so 
that  every  evening  a  stop  was  made  at 
an  inn,  not  for  a  relay,  but  for  the  night. 

A  hearse  could  not  go  slower,  the 
postillions  disdainfully  remarked,  and  in 
so  doing  spoke  better  than  they  knew. 
The  carriage  they  drove  contained  al- 
most a  corpse.  At  each  lurch  of  the 
coach,  Lasthenie  was  on  the  point  of 
fainting,  and  that  devil  who  lurks  in 
ambuscade  in  the  best  and  strongest 
hearts  never  failed  on  such  occasions  to 
inspire  Mme.  de  Ferjol  with  a  sinister 
hope. 

"If  only  she  would  have  a " 

But  the  woman's  piety  strangled  the 
hope  even  before  it  was  fully  expressed. 

She  was  closer  to  her  daughter  there 

than  in  the  embrasure  of  their  window. 

[  162  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Yet  they  spoke  as  little  as  before. 
What  had  they  to  talk  of?  Everything 
had  been  said.  Absorbed  in  themselves 
neither  thought  of  looking  from  the 
window.  They  had  no  curiosity  in  the 
landscape,  in  the  passers,  in  anything. 
The  long  hours  went  by  in  a  silence 
worse  than  reproach;  they  were  pitiless 
to  each  other,  atrocious,  both  of  them, 
in  their  resentment.  For  they  were 
embittered  now,  one  at  her  inabihty  to 
extract  anything  from  the  obstinate  and 
stupid  chill  who  was  her  own,  and  who 
sat  there  with  her,  knee  to  knee;  the 
other  at  the  injustice  and  cruelty  of  her 
mother. 

The  long  journey  across  France  was 
an  agony  to  them  both;  to  Agathe  as 
well,  for  Lasthenie's  sufferings  made  her 
suffer  too.  She  had  the  same  idea  con- 
cerning her  darling's  disorder;  it  was 

[  16.'  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

not  one  for  human  remedies;  exorcism 
alone  could  dissolve  the  spell;  and  she 
had  said  as  much  to  Mme.  de  Ferjol, 
who,  in  spite  of  her  profound  faith,  had 
shrugged  her  shoulders,  a  reply  which 
to  Agathe  in  her  piety  was  incompre- 
hensible. Once  back  in  Olonde,  how- 
ever, she  knew  what  she  would  do.  Of 
all  worships  in  Normandy,  the  most  an- 
cient is  that  of  the  Blissful  Thomas  de 
Bivelle,  confessor  of  St.  Louis  the  King. 
And  Agathe  intended  to  walk  bare- 
footed to  the  tomb  of  that  holy  man, 
who  could  easily  add  Lasthenie's  recov- 
ery to  the  many  other  miracles  he  had 
worked.  If  then  she  were  not  cured, 
Agathe  determined  to  ask  a  priest  to  ex- 
orcise the  spell.  For,  in  spite  of  her  ab- 
solute devotion  to  the  Baroness  de 
Ferjol,  and  the  familiarity  with  which 
she  addressed  her,  Agathe  was  afraid  of 

[164] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

the  imposing  woman  who  closed  her 
mouth  with  a  word,  sometimes  with  a 
silence;  and  she  did  not  dare  to  presume 
to  offer  further  advice. 

At  last,  after  many  days,  Olonde  was 
reached.  If  anything  could  have  acted 
on  Lasthenie's  dulled  imagination  it 
would  have  been  the  splendor  and  gaiety 
of  the  sunlight  which  fell  upon  her  as 
she  alighted  from  the  coffin-like  coach. 
Had  her  soul  been  left  to  her  it  would 
have  been  deliciously  inundated  by  the 
brilliancy  of  a  sky  such  as,  from  her 
mountain  cave,  she  had  never  seen  be- 
fore. But  she  was  too  weak  to  appre- 
ciate the  charm  of  that  sudden  douche  of 
light.  The  sun  that  day  gave  to  the 
leaves  and  the  hedges — which  the  rain 
had  brushed  and  the  wind  had  polished 
— the  glitter  and  sheen  of  emeralds. 
Normandy  is  the  Erin  of  France,  but  an 

[165] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Erin  rich,  cultivated,  worthy  to  bear  the 
color  of  happy  and  realized  hope;  where- 
as the  Erin  of  Great  Britain  has  only  the 
right  to  the  livery  of  despair.  Unfortu- 
nately, all  this  affected  no  one  but 
Agathe.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  had  broken 
the  last  tie  that  held  her  to  earth.  In 
leaving  the  tomb  of  her  husband,  in 
which  she  too  expected  to  be  placed, 
her  one  thought  had  been  to  save  her 
daughter's  name.  To  exterior  impres- 
sions she  was  as  unconscious  as  Las- 
thenie. 

They  had  both  become  in  every  sense 
unnatural;  they  knew  it  and  it  terrified 
them.  They  loved  each  other  still,  but 
an  involuntary  hatred  had  begun  to  filter 
venemously  into  that  love,  corrupting 
and  embittering  it  as  a  poison  corrupts 
a  well. 

It   was   with    these   sentiments,    and 

[166] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

with  the*  indifference  of  people  to  whom 
life  has  nothing  to  offer,  that  they  estab- 
lished themselves  in  their  refuge,  the 
abandoned  Chateau  d'Olonde,  which 
they  had  reached  without  notifying  any- 
one, and  where  they  wished  to  remain 
unknown.  Unassisted,  Agathe  made 
the  old  castle  almost  habitable  for  them. 
Rejuvenated  by  the  enchanted  oxygen 
of  her  natal  land  she  sufficed  unto  her- 
self, and  spared-  them  the  slightest 
trouble.  The  shutters  she  left  tightly 
closed,  but  to  air  the  musty  halls  and 
chambers  she  opened  the  windows  be- 
hind them.  She  dusted  and  she  rubbed 
the  furniture,  which  cracked  with  the 
weight  of  age;  from  the  closets  she  took 
the  piled  and  yellowed  linen;  she  made 
the  beds  and  heated  them,  delivering 
them  from  that  sepulchral  impression 
which  old  linen  that  has  lain  long  un- 

[  167  ] 


The  Sto?\ij  Without  a  Name 

aired  exhales.  In  spite  of  the  three 
people  who  had  come  there,  exteriorly 
the  castle  was  unchanged.  To  the  peas- 
ants who  passed  it,  and  who  paid  no 
more  attention  to  it  than  if  it  had  never 
existed,  it  was  empty  still.  They  had 
always  seen  it  there;  with  its  barred 
shutters  they  were  familiar;  the  excom- 
municated appearance  which  it  pos- 
sessed had  ceased  to  impress  them;  and 
when  they  passed  that  way  they  give 
no  heed  to  the  singularity  of  a  castle 
inhabited  by  a  silence  that  resembled 
death. 

The  tenant-farmers  of  Olonde  lived 
too  far  from  the  castle  to  be  aware  of 
what  was  happening  there.  Agathe  was 
forty  years  old  when  she  disappeared 
with  her  mistress,  and  the  twenty  years 
of  her  absence  had  changed  her  appear- 
ance so  completely  that  there  was  no 

[168] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

one  in  the  market-place  to  recognize  her. 
To  the  peasants  she  was  merely  an  old 
woman  of  their  own  class,  who  paid  cash 
and  held  her  tongue.  The  Normans  are 
taciturn,  and  so  distrustful  that  they 
make  no  advances  until  advances  are 
made  to  them.  They  attend  to  their 
own  business  and  not  to  the  affairs  of 
others.  As  a  consequence  Agathe  was 
not  embarrassed  by  any  inquisitive  curi- 
osity. The  roads  that  led  to  the  castle 
were  rarely  used,  for  the  castle  itself  was 
beyond  the  highways  that  led  to  the  vil- 
lages of  Denneville  and  St.  Germain- 
sur-Ay.  The  entrance  to  it  was  a  great 
rusted  gate,  provided  with  an  interior 
shutter  that  cut  off  any  view  of  the 
court;  but  beyond  the  castle,  in  an  angle 
of  the  garden  wall,  was  a  little  low  door, 
and  it  was  that  which  Agathe  used  when 
she  went  to  market.     On  returning,  and 

[169] 


The  Stori)  Without  a  Name 

before  putting  the  key  in  the  lock,  she 
looked  around  carefully  like  a  thief. 
Her  precautions  were  needless;  there 
was  never  anyone  about. 

In  accordance  with  her  intention, 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  created  there  a  greater 
solitude  than  the  one  she  had  left,  one 
that  was  not  solitude  alone,  but  captivity 
as  well,  but  against  which  Lasthenie 
made  no  effort  at  revolt.  The  idea  of 
honor,  as  the  world  accepts  it,  occupied 
much  less  space  in  her  virginal  and 
weakened  mind  than  in  that  of  her 
mother,  but  always  she  had  been 
obedient,  and  now  she  was  too  wholly 
demoralized  to  complain.  Agathe,  in 
her  fanatic  love  for  the  young  girl,  whom 
she  never  could  have  suspected  of  a 
purity  that  was  not  immaculate,  was  not 
at  all  surprised  at  this  mysterious  and 

[170] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

prodigious  isolation.  It  seemed  very 
natural  that  Mme.  de  Ferjol  should  be 
unwilling  to  have  anyone  see  what  a  ruin 
Lasthenie  was,  or  to  have  anyone  say, 
That  is  what  the  noble  Demoiselle 
d'Olonde  has  brought  back  from  her 
scandalous  elopement.  Meanwhile  she 
busied  herself  with  her  plan  of  a  pil- 
grimage to  the  tomb  of  the  Blissful 
Thomas  of  Bivelle,  and  of  the  exorcism 
which  was  to  follow,  if  her  prayers  were 
unanswered.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  was 
therefore  unhindered  by  her  daughter  or 
by  Agathe,  without  whose  aid  indeed 
she  could  not  have  created  the  cloister 
that  she  had.  For  Olonde  was  a 
cloister,  but  without  chapel  or  services, 
a  thing  that  added  to  Mme.  de  Ferjol's 
remorse.  Even  veiled  she  could  not 
have  gone  to  mass  in  the  neighboring 

[  171  1 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

parish,  for  at  that  particular  time  it  was 
dangerous  to  leave  Lasthenie  alone  for 
a  minute. 

"I  must  sacrifice  to  her/'  she  resent- 
fully reflected,  "even  the  duties  of  reli- 
gion"— duties  that  v^ere  weightier  to 
that  Jansenist  than  to  anyone.  "She 
damns  us  both." 

This  intensity  in  religion  it  is  neces- 
sary to  understand  in  order  to  appreciate 
what  the  woman  sufl^ered,  for  she  did 
sufifer,  and  acutely.  The  castle,  which  I 
have  compared  to  a  nunless  and  chapel- 
less  cloister,  soon  became  to  Lasthenie 
and  herself  as  suffocating  as  the  post- 
chaise,  which  had  affected  them  like  a 
coffin.  Happily — if  such  a  word  can 
be  used  in  a  story  like  this — happily, 
about  the  castle  there  was  space  enough 
to  breathe  in.  The  walls  of  the  unculti- 
vated garden  were  sufficiently  high  to 

[172] 


The  Story  Witliout  a  Name 

conceal  the  two  recluses  when  they 
cared  to  take  a  few  steps  in  the  open 
air. 

Soon,  however,  Lasthenie  left  the 
garden  to  itself.  She  preferred  to  lie  on 
the  lounge,  which  her  mother  occupied 
at  night.  For,  like  a  jailer — worse  even, 
for  in  prison  the  jailer  is  not  always 
present — Mme.  de  Ferjol  never  left  her 
side.  Lasthenie  lived  with  hers,  a 
jailor  tenaciously  silent  now,  but  omni- 
present and  implacable.  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol had  adopted  an  attitude  which  gives 
some  idea  of  the  strength  of  her  char- 
acter. She  said  nothing  to  Lasthenie; 
she  no  longer  reproached  her.  She  un- 
derstood at  last  the  impossibility  of  con- 
quering a  girl  who  was  at  once  so  weak 
and  so  firm,  and  that  firmness  was  an 
example  to  her.  The  silence,  which  be- 
tween them  had  always  more  or  less  ex- 

[173] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

isted,  at  this  time  became  absolute.  It 
was  the  silence  of  two  corpses  in  the 
same  bier,  but  of  two  corpses  that  were 
not  dead,  who,  within  the  four  dumb 
planks  of  a  coffin,  saw  and  touched  each 
other.  The  funeral  silence  was  the 
most  insupportable  of  all  the  things  they 
underwent. 

Prayer  is  not,  as  St.  Martin  has  said, 
the  breath  of  the  soul.  The  soul's 
breath  is  untrammelled  speech,  the  full 
expression  of  a  thought,  whether  of  love 
or  of  hate,  of  prayer  or  blasphemy,  of 
cursing  or  benediction.  Whoso  is  con- 
demned to  silence  is  condemned  to  be 
suffocated  and  yet  not  to  die.  It  was 
to  that  which  these  women  in  their  de- 
spair had  condemned  themselves.  To 
each  the  silence  of  the  other  was  death. 
INIme.   de   Ferjol,  whose  faith  nothing 

[174] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

could  alter,  still  spoke  to  God.  She 
threw  herself  on  her  knees  before  her 
daughter  and  prayed  to  Him  in  implor- 
ing undertones.  But  Lasthenie  ad- 
dressed God  as  seldom  as  she  addressed 
her  mother,  and  smiled  even — an  evil 
smile,  one  that  was  vaguely  scornful — 
at  the  sight  of  her  mother  kneeling  in 
prayer  at  her  side.  The  injustice  of 
her  mother  had  taken  from  her  all  belief 
in  the  justice  of  God. 

Agathe,  whom  Mme.  de  Ferjol  kept  at 
arm's  length,  did  not  dare  to  come  with 
her  work  into  that  room  where  no  one 
spoke;  and,  although  beside  herself  with 
anxiety  because  of  Lasthenie,  she  was 
glad  nevertheless  to  resume  possession 
of  the  places  and  things  she  knew  so 
well,  and  she  busied  herself  with  the 
household    duties    which    her    mistress 

[175] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

seemed  to  have  entirely  forgotten. 
Without  Agathe,  who  fed  them  as  in- 
fants and  lunatics  are  fed,  they  would 
have  perhaps  both  died  of  hunger  ab- 
sorbed in  devouring  thoughts. 


[176] 


IX 


ONE  evening  Mme.  de  Ferjol  no- 
ticed certain  symptoms  that  fore- 
tokened an  early  deliverance,  and 
though  the  crisis  had  been  long  awaited, 
its  attendant  dangers  alarmed  her  as 
they  had  not  done  before.  They  were 
solemn  and  menacing,  and  her  untrained 
hands  might  easily  render  them  tragic 
and  mortal. 

By  force  of  will  she  mastered  her  nerv- 
ousness and  prepared  for  the  task.  Las- 
thenie's  sufiferings  left  no  room  for 
doubt.  During  the  night  she  was  deliv- 
ered. A  little  before,  her  mother  mut- 
tered: 

"Bite  the  sheets  so  as  not  to  cry  out; 
try  to  have  that  courage." 

[177] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Lasthenie  had  it:  she  did  not  utter  a 
single  cry;  and  even  if  she  had  it  would 
have  disturbed  no  one  in  that  house,  to 
which  night  could  not  add  a  silence 
greater  than  it  possessed  by  day.  The 
only  person  who  might  have  heard  was 
Agathe,  but  she  occupied  a  room  at  the 
other  end  of  the  castle,  a  precaution 
which  Mme.  de  Ferjol's  prudence  had 
long  since  devised.  Nevertheless,  in 
spite  of  everything,  during  one  moment 
the  fear  that  comes  of  uncertainty  beset 
her.  She  was  sure  she  was  alone  with 
her  daughter,  and  yet  with  beating  heart 
she  crept  and  opened  the  door.  She 
fancied  Agathe  crouching  there.  Such 
a  thing  was  absurd;  but  no  matter,  she 
opened  the  door  with  that  sinking  of  the 
heart  which  visits  those  who  are  not  sure 
whether  a  specter  may  not  surge  out  of 
the  gaping  black  of  night.     In  her  case 

[178] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

the  specter  would  have  been  Agathe. 
Trembling,  her  eyes  dilated,  she  peered 
down  through  the  shadows  of  the  cor- 
ridor; there  was  no  one;  and  trembling 
still  she  returned  to  the  bed  where  her 
daughter  writhed  in  agony. 

The  infant  must  have  been  exhausted 
by  the  sufferings  of  its  mother.  It  was 
stillborn.  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who  had 
reproached  herself  for  hoping  for  a  cer- 
tain accident  which  the  jolting  vehicle 
might  have  caused,  and  thereby  saved 
her  daughter's  future,  could  not  help 
being  glad  at  a  death  for  which  no  one 
was  to  blame.  She  thanked  God  for  the 
loss  of  a  child  whom  in  thought  she  had 
lugubriously  christened  Tristan;  she 
blessed  providence  for  taking  it  from  her 
before  its  birth.  She  and  her  daughter 
too  were  spared  new  shames  and  fresher 
griefs.     For  to  her  also  it  was  a  deliv- 

[179] 


The  Storif  Without  a  Name 

erance.  Death  had  freed  her  from  a 
child  whom  she  would  have  had  to  hide 
during  its  lifetime  as  she  had  hid  it  in 
its  mother,  and  who,  living,  would  have 
impurpled  Lasthenie  with  that  blush  of 
shame  v/hich  bastards  put  on  their 
mother's  cheeks. 

"There  is  your  crime  and  its  expia- 
tion!" 

Lasthenie  looked  at  the  child  with 
eyes  that  were  as  dead  as  it,  while 
through  her  broken  body  a  shiver 
passed. 

"It  is  happier  than  I  am,"  she  mur- 
mured. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  watching  her 
face,  searching  for  a  look  of  tenderness, 
which  it  astonished  her  not  to  find. 
There  was  horror  there,  the  eternal  hor- 
ror to  which  fate  seemed  to  have  dedi- 
cated the  girl,  but  nothing  of  that  which 

[  180  ] 


TJie  Story  Without  a  Name 

explains  and  absolves,  no  trace  of  love, 
nor  yet  of  maternal  affection.  Invol- 
untarily ]\Ime.  de  Ferjol  had  counted  on 
that  supreme  moment,  but  she  had 
cotmted  in  vain;  the  mystery  of  Las- 
thenie's  soul  was  impenetrable.  At  that 
hour  there  v^ere  certainly  many  women 
in  the  world  giving  birth  to  the  fruit  of 
illegitimate  love,  but  was  there  one,  was 
there  another,  whose  destiny  resembled 
Lasthenie's?  one  on  whom  night  and 
fear  and  death  piled  a  triple  shadow,  in 
order  that  a  nameless  child  of  some 
nameless  story  might  be  forever  hid? 

It  was  a  night  of  agonies,  and  there 
was  still  another  to  be  endured ;  the  child 
happily  was  dead,  but  its  body  was 
there,  and  that  last  vestige  of  shame 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  knew  must  disappear. 

Lasthenie  had  fallen  asleep.  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  took  the  corpse,  and,  rolling 

[181] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

it  in  one  of  the  swaddling-clothes  at 
which  she  had  worked  during  the  silent 
hours  she  had  passed  at  her  daughter's 
side,  she  left  the  girl  and  the  room,  lock- 
ing the  door  behind  her  as  she  went. 
Presently  she  was  in  the  garden;  an  old 
spade  was  there,  she  remembered,  and 
with  it,  in  an  angle  of  the  wall,  she  dug 
a  grave  for  the  child,  hurriedly,  her 
hands  trembling  and  humiliated. 

"I  bury  it  as  though  I  had  killed  it," 
she  thought;  and  with  the  fright  of  guilt 
she  stamped  down  the  earth  on  what 
might  have  been  her  grandchild.  Then 
she  returned  to  the  room,  where  Las- 
thenie  still  slept. 

When  the  latter  awoke  she  asked  no 
question.  She  appeared  to  have  forgot- 
ten the  child.  Mnie.  de  Ferjol  noticed 
this,  and  waited,  wondering  whether 
she  would  speak  of  it  first.     But,  mon- 

[  182  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

strous  as  it  may  seem,  she  neither  spoke 
of  it  then  or  later  on.  Only  her  tears 
flowed  continuously,  as  before,  and 
when  at  last  she  was  sufficiently  recov- 
ered to  leave  her  bed,  she  seemed  as  ill 
as  she  had  been  at  first.  There  was  the 
same  weakness,  the  same  pallor,  the 
same  stupor,  the  same  self-concentra- 
tion, the  same  frightened  expression,  the 
same  dementia.  The  dishonoring  blow 
which  her  mother  had  dealt  at  her  inno- 
cence, joined  to  the  inexplicability  of  her 
condition,  had  put  a  wound  in  her  that 
still  bled,  one  that  would  never  heal. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol,  reassured  by  the 
knowledge  that  the  secret  of  her  daugh- 
ter's dishonor  was  now  a  thing  of  the 
past,  became  gentler,  and,  being  a  Chris- 
tion,  charitable  and  lenient  too.  Her 
customary  irritability  disappeared. 
The     irreparable     was     to     her     like 

[183] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

death,  a  thing  to  be  accepted.  But 
with  Lasthenie  it  was  different.  She 
declined  to  acept  the  irreparable.  Of 
the  two  women  it  was  the  weaker  who 
showed  the  greater  strength.  Her  rela- 
tions with  her  mother  she  did  not  alter, 
neither  did  she  raise  her  head.  She  was 
pitiless.  That  dagger  which  resent- 
ment is  she  kept  in  the  wound  it  had 
created. 

Agathe,  who  during  the  time  the  girl 
was  in  bed  had  hoped  for  some  favor- 
able change  in  her  disorder,  seeing  now, 
by  her  languor  and  unceasing  tears,  that 
the  prospect  of  amelioration  was  slight, 
returned  to  her  former  belief  in  the 
devil  and  his  spells,  and  asked  permis- 
sion to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  the  tomb 
of  the  Blissful  Thomas  de  Bivelle,  a  per- 
mission which  Mme.  de  Ferjol  accorded. 

Agathe  started  off  barefoot,  with  that 

[184] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

faith  of  mediaeval  pilgrims  which,  in 
spite  of  the  progress  of  contempo- 
raneous incredulity,  still  abides  in  Nor- 
mandy. 

Four  days  later  she  returned,  but 
sadder  than  when  she  started.  The 
miracle  that  she  had  demanded  in  the 
security  of  her  perfect  faith  seemed  to 
her  now  remote,  perhaps  unobtainable. 
For,  on  approaching  Olonde,  there  in 
the  moonlight  she  had  found  a  coffin 
stretched  across  the  road.  She  had 
tried  to  move  it,  and  could  not,  and  sud- 
denly it  had  disappeared.  In  the  super- 
stitions of  the  land,  in  which  she  firmly 
beHeved,  an  experience  such  as  that  was 
an  evil  omen,  the  presage  of  coming 
death. 

The  next  day,  however,  Lasthenie 
seemed  to  her  a  trifle  better  than  before, 
and  had  it  not  been  for  the  apparition 

[185] 


The  Storij  Without  a  Name 

she  would  have  attributed  the  sUght 
amelioration  to  the  pilgrimage.  She 
told  Mme.  de  Ferjol  all  the  circum- 
stances of  her  journey,  but  said  nothing 
about  the  coffin. 

*'What  is  the  use?"  she  reflected. 
''She  would  not  believe  me." 

But  Mme.  de  Ferjol  did  believe  in 
prayer,  and  in  the  miracles  which 
prayers  produce,  and  she  told  Agathe 
that  Lasthenie  already  felt  better  for 
those  that  had  been  offered  for  her  at 
the  tomb  of  the  saint. 

*'I  intend  to  go  to  mass  myself  pres- 
ently," she  added. 

Now,  Agathe  had  not  missed  one,  and 
she  had  excited  no  more  curiosity  in 
the  church  than  she  had  in  the  market- 
place. To  the  assistants  she  was  but 
one  peasant  more.     But  what  was  pos- 

[186] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

sible  to  Agathe  was  impossible  for  her 
mistress. 

So  soon  then  as  Mme.  de  Ferjol  felt 
that  the  time  had  come  when  she  could 
attend  holy  worship,  she  experienced  a 
sensation,  not  of  joy,  for  the  condition 
of  her  daughter  made  her  far  too  melan- 
choly for  that,  but  of  something  that 
dilated  her  heart,  so  long  and  so  hor- 
ribly compressed.  In  the  native  com- 
mon-sense which  had  never  deserted  her, 
and  in  her  appreciation  of  the  realities 
of  life,  she  knew  that  now  she  and  her 
daughter  must  abandon  the  incognito 
which  thus  far  they  had  preserved.  In 
consequence  she  gave  Agathe  certain  in- 
structions. She  told  her  to  tell  the 
tenantry  of  her  arrival,  to  explain  that 
she  had  come  because  of  her  daugh- 
ter's health,  to  whom  a  change  of  air 

[187] 


The  Stoni  Without  a  Name 

was  necessary,  and  to  add  that  until  her 
daughter  was  fully  recovered  she  could 
receive  no  one. 

These  precautions  were  needless.  It 
was  not  a  time  when  people  received  or 
made  visits.  The  Revolution  was  gal- 
loping like  a  fever,  the  crisis  of  delirium 
was  at  hand. 

The  two  miserable  chatelaines  of 
Olonde  overcome  by  the  domestic  trag- 
edy of  which  their  dwelling  was  the 
theater,  knew  absolutely  nothing  of  the 
political  tragedy  which  was  about  to 
have  France  for  stage. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  talked  of  going  to 
mass.  In  a  moment  there  would  be 
none  for  her  to  attend,  nor  one  of  those 
altars  to  kneel  at  which  are  the  columns 
where  every  broken  heart  should  lean. 


[188] 


X 


WHEN  Mme.  de  Ferjol  appeared 
at  mass  in  one  of  the  parishes 
adjacent  to  0.1onde,  she  did  not  cause  as 
much  of  a  sensation  as  she  might  have 
caused  at  another  time.  The  rumor  of 
the  Revolution  dominated  everything, 
and  even  in  Normandy,  where  common- 
sense  is  a  birthright,  it  brought  with  it 
enthusiasm  or  fright;  it  turned  all  heads, 
preparatory  perhaps  to  amputating 
them.  As  a  consequence  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol, whose  elopement  had  been  well-nigh 
forgotten,  created  little  attention.  Her 
chateau,  which  for  years  had  dozed  on 
the  side  of  the  highway  where  its  three 
turrets  were  planted,  opened  its  eyes,  or 

[1891 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

rather  its  shutters,  again,  and  thq  ;white 
headdress  of  Agathe  was  seen  in  the 
windows  once  more.  The  wooden  shut- 
ters that  barricaded  the  gateway  dis- 
appeared, and  to  the  infrequent  passers 
the  Httle  details  of  Hfe  seemed  to  have 
noiselessly  returned  to  the  castle  that 
had  been  dead.  But  the  fact  that  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  occupied  it  was  practically  as 
unnoticed  as  her  arrival.  The  solitude 
was  undisturbed.  She  lived  in  that 
tete-a-tete  with  her  daughter  which  was 
to  be  the  latter's  life,  and  which  now  no 
other  presence  than  that  of  Agathe  dis- 
turbed. 

There  is  no  marriage  possible  for  Las- 
thenie,  the  mother  often  reflected.  For 
how  could  she  say  to  a  man  who  might 
love  her  enough  to  marry  her,  and  who 
in  marrying  her  would  believe  her  to  be 
a  young  girl — how  could  she  say  that 

[190] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Lasthenie  was  a  widow,  and  a  widow 
incapable  of  emerging  from  the  abjec- 
tion of  her  widowhood?  How  was  she 
to  confide  the  dishonor  of  her  daughter 
to  the  man  who  came  to  ask  her  hand? 
Honesty,  loyalty,  religion,  every  one  of 
the  divine  atoms  which  went  to  the 
making  of  that  woman,  rose  in  rebellion 
at  the  thought;  and  of  all  the  thoughts 
that  crucified  her,  that  one  was  not  the 
least  poignant.  In  her  present  prostra- 
tion and  languor,  Lasthenie  was  neces- 
sarily incompetent  to  inspire  any  other 
sentiment  than  that  of  pity;  but  she  was 
young,  and  what  powerful  elixirs  there 
are  in  youth!  what  wonderful  resources 
it  possesses!  Only,  under  penalty  of 
infamy,  there  is  no  recourse  against  the 
necessity  of  telling  the  truth.  And  it 
was  that  knowledge  of  infamy  which 
bound  the  existence  and  the  destiny  of 

[  191  ] 


The  Storij  Without  a  Name 

the  mother  to  the  destiny  and  existence 
of  the  child,  condemning  them  in  their 
isolation  to  live  face  to  face,  alienated 
forever.  The  supposition  that  some  day 
a  man  might  love  the  girl  was  but  a 
dream,  one,  however,  which  added  a 
grief  of  its  own  to  those  sorrows  which 
fate  had  already  inflicted.  During  the 
terrible  night  which  I  have  related 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  had  searched  in  vain  in 
her  daughter's  face  for  a  single  sign  of 
love.  There  had  been  none,  there  was 
to  be  none;  Lasthenie  was  destined  to 
die  without  loving  or  being  loved.  Her 
lost  beauty  she  never  recovered,  and 
although  when  Agathe  returned  from 
her  pilgrimage  Mme.  de  Ferjol  told 
her  that  the  girl  was  better,  and  so 
told  her  perhaps  because  she  hoped 
such  was  the  case  rather  than  be- 
lieved it,  yet,  as  the  days  and  months 

[192  1 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

passed  over  the  girl's  once  charming 
head,  and  bowed  it  more  and  more,  hope 
went  and  belief  as  well.  Anyone  who 
had  known  the  circumstances  would 
have  said  that  the  accouchement,  of 
which  she  might  have  died  and  did  not 
die,  had  caused  some  rupture  of  the 
spinal  column,  for  afterwards  her  back 
was  bent.  And  when  she  and  her 
mother  appeared  in  church,  merely  at 
sight  of  them  it  was  understood  that 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  would  receive  no  one, 
the  better  to  care  for  her  daughter's 
health.  The  general  opinion  was  that 
the  girl  she  dragged  with  her  she  would 
not  drag  long. 

She  might  have  done  so,  however, 
had  not  the  Revolution  in  its  sacri- 
legious apogee  suddenly  closed  the 
church's  door. 

There  was  no  reason  now  to  hide  Las- 

[193] 


The  Storjj_  Without  a  Naine 

thenie  from  the  physicians,  and  at  Mme. 
de  Ferjol's  request  several  of  them  came 
to  Olonde,  but  in  the  girl,  feeble  now  in 
mind  as  in  body,  they  detected  merely 
one  of  those  marasms  of  which  the 
cause  is  impenetrable.  Alone  in  the 
universe  Mme.  de  Ferjol  knew  that 
cause.  It  was  the  girl's  sin,  she  told 
herself,  and  it  was  of  that  she  would  die. 
Jansenist  as  she  was,  she  had  a  firmer 
belief  in  God's  justice  than  in  his  pity; 
and,  to  her  thinking,  it  was  divine  jus- 
tice that  had  bent  that  delicious  form 
which  the  arms  of  a  man  had  embraced. 
And  convinced  that  the  girl  would  not 
escape  the  punishment  of  her  sin,  Mme. 
de  Ferjol  watched  her  falling  day  by 
day,  deeper  into  the  mysterious  disease 
that  was  killing  her,  as  one  watches  the 
remnants  of  a  demolished  palace  turn 
into  dust.     Tn  spite  of  the  girl's  conduct, 

[194] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

in  spite  of  her  refusal  to  acknowledge 
her  guilt,  in  spite  of  the  severity  of  her 
own  creed,  in  spite,  in  fact,  of  every- 
thing, Mme.  de  Ferjol  suffered  in  the 
suffering  of  her  daughter;  only  she  did 
not  express  that  sympathy  to  Lasthenie, 
who    for    that    matter    was    no   longer 
capable    of    understanding    even    what 
sympathy     was.     The     malady     from 
which  she  suffered,  and  which  discon- 
certed the  physicians  so  well,  that,  after 
suggesting  moxas,  they  declared  it  in- 
curable, this  malady  was  not  of  the  body 
alone,    but    of   the    soul.     It    possessed 
her   entirely.     Her   reason,   which   had 
brushed  very  close  to  idiocy,  turned  the 
little  light  that  was  left  to  it  toward  the 
shadows  of  lunacy.     But  her  silence  was 
her  safeguard.     She  was  dying,  as  she 
had  lived,  without  speaking.     All  day 
she  would   sit,   speechless,  unoccupied, 

[195] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

motionless,  her  head  against  the  wall, 
without  a  word  even  for  Agathe,  who 
drowned  herself  in  tears,  and  bemoaned 
the  absence  of  that  resource  on  which 
she  had  counted,  a  priest  to  exorcise  her 
darling.  For  the  priests  had  fled,  the 
Revolution  was  at  its  height,  a  thing 
which  was  known  at  Olonde,  only  be- 
cause there  was  no  priest  to  exorcise 
Lasthenie.  The  fact  in  itself  is  unique. 
There,  in  that  little  Chateau  d'Olonde, 
which  the  Revolution  spared,  and  which 
with  its  three  turrets  still  endures,  were 
three  women  unhappy  enough,  in  the 
nest  of  misery  in  which  they  crouched, 
to  forget  everything  which  did  not  con- 
cern them.  While  the  blood  of  scaffolds 
inundated  France,  the  three  martyrs  of 
an  ill-fated  life  saw  only  that  which 
flowed  from  their  hearts. 

It  was  during  this  forgetfulness  of  the 

[196] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

forgotten  Revolution  that  Lasthenle 
succumbed,  carrying  with  her  to  the 
tomb  her  secret — what  Mine,  de  Ferjol 
thought  was  her  secret.  There  had 
been  nothing  to  warn  anyone  that  the 
end  was  so  near.  She  was  not  different 
that  day  from  the  day  previous  and  the 
"days  before  that.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  and 
Agathe  had  not  noticed  in  her  face, 
which  had  been  despairfully  pale  so 
long,  nor  in  the  expression  of  her  eyes, 
nor  yet  in  the  weakness  of  her  body, 
anything  to  make  them,  think  she  was 
about  to  die. 

As  a  rule  there  was  no  need  to  watch 
her.  They  left  her,  her  head  against  the 
wall  of  the  room  which  she  had  chosen, 
and  came  and  went  through  that  house 
in  which  two  things  were  invariable, 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  praying,  and  Agathe 
weeping,  each  in  a  corner.     On  that  day 

[197] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

they  found  her  exactly  as  they  had  left 
her,  in  the  same  place,  her  head  against 
the  wall,  her  eyes  wide  open — but  dead, 
her  soul  departed,  that  poor  soul  of 
hers  which  was  hardly  a  soul  at  all.  At 
that  spectacle  Agathe  threw  herself  at 
the  knees  of  her  darling,  embracing  them 
passionately,  and  rolling  on  them,  as  she 
sobbed,  her  old  grief-stricken  head. 
But  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who  contained  her 
emotion  better,  slipped  her  hand  under 
the  breast  of  her  whom  she  had  often 
called  by  a  name  that  fitted  her  well, 
"little  girl,"  in  order  to  discover  whether 
the  heart  that  had  beaten  had  ceased  to 
beat,  and  there  felt  something. 

''Blood,  Agathe!" 

Her  voice  was  horrible  as  she  spoke. 
On  her  fingers  were  a  few  drops. 
Agathe  tore  herself  from  the  knees  she 
was     embracing,     and     together     they 

[198] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

opened  the  waist.  Horror  seized  them. 
Lasthenie  had  killed  herself,  slowly, 
little  by  little,  each  day  a  fraction  more, 
with  pins. 

They  drew  out  eighteen  stuck  in  the 
region  of  the  heart. 


[  199  ] 


XI 


TWENTY-FIVE  years  later  Mme. 
de  Ferjol,  who  had  survived  her 
daughter,  and  whom,  as  she  said  of  her- 
self, nothing  could  kill,  was  dining  one 
evening  with  the  Count  de  Lude,  a  rela- 
tive of  hers,  and  parenthetically  one  of 
the  most  charming  hosts  in  St.  Sauveur, 
where,  as  may  be  remembered,  there  had 
been  plenty  of  dancing  before  the  Revo- 
lution, and  where  she  herself  had  danced 
with  the  white  officer,  her  black  angel 
who  put  her  in  mourning  for  the  rest  of 
her  life.  At  that  time  dancing  had 
ceased.  Autre  temps,  autre  maeurs!  But 
dining  had  not.  In  place  of  contre- 
dances  were  large  repasts.  It  was  at  one 
of  these  that  Mme,  de  Ferjol  assisted. 

[200] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

Doubly  aged  by  grief  and  by  years, 
severer  in  piety  than  ever,  almost  a  saint 
— if  a  pitiless  saint  there  can  be — it  was 
surprising  enough  to  find  her  amid  the 
gaiety  of  a  dinner-table.  She  was 
there,  however.  Endowed,  as  has  been 
seen,  with  an  unusual  strength  of  char- 
acter, inimical  to  any  form  of  affecta- 
tion, she  had  re-entered  the  world  to 
which  she  belonged — long  after  the 
death  of  her  daughter,  it  is  true — but 
she  had  re-entered  it,  and  had  renewed 
her  relations  with  a  simplicity  and  so- 
briety of  her  own.  Buried  in  her  heart 
was  the  memory  of  the  unforgettable 
secret  which  her  daughter  had  died 
without  revealing,  and  that  memory  was 
as  a  cancer  to  her;  she  hid  it,  she  gave 
no  sign,  but  it  gnawed  ceaselessly  at 
her  breast.  No  one  had  ever  suspected 
what  she  knew  of  her  daughter's  life, 

[201] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

but  what  made  her  suffer  most  was  not 
what  she  knew,  but  what  she  did  not 
know.  Was  she  ever  to  know?  She 
had  no  hope  of  it.  Meanwhile,  in- 
wardly despairful,  outwardly  composed, 
she  continued  to  live.  She  was  but  a 
ruin,  but  a  ruin  like  the  Coliseum;  one 
that  had  its  grandeur  and  its  majesty. 
At  the  end  of  the  table  where  she  sat 
there  was  less  laughter  and  loud  talking 
than  at  the  other.  Her  seriousness 
commanded  respect.  The  dinner  itself 
was  lively  and  agreeable,  though  the 
guests  were  terribly  mixed.  It  offered 
in  epitome  a  portrait  of  society  such  as 
the  Revolution  and  the  Empire  had 
made  it,  a  reunion,  as  the  Count  de  Lude 
put  it,  of  the  three  classes.  The  clergy 
was  represented,  the  nobility,  and  the 
third  estate.  Between  the  Marquise  de 
Limorre,  an  aristocrat  to  her  finger-tips, 

[202] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

and  the  Marquis  de  Pont-1  'Abbe,  whose 
title  was  as  old  as  the  hills,  was  a  Nor- 
man peasant,  a  superb-looking  fellow, 
be  it  said,  who  had  got  rid  of  his  native 
uncouthness  and  had  become  an  authen- 
tic Parisian  bourgeois.  And  there,  be- 
tween the  marquis  and  the  marquise,  the 
bourgeois  spread  a  white  waistcoat,  like 
a  silver  escutcheon  between  its  two  sup- 
ports; of  which  one,  the  marquise,  was 
the  unicorn,  and  the  other,  the  marquis, 
the  greyhound.  Each  year  he  came  to 
St.  Sauveur  on  a  vacation,  for  he  enjoyed 
the  leisures  of  wealth;  wealth  which  he 
would  willingly  have  lost  solely  for  the 
pleasure  of  regaining  it.  He  was  bored. 
He  had  a  special  complaint,  the  home- 
sickness of  the  retired  merchant. 

In  trade  he  had  been  a  grocer,  but  a 
grocer  of  the  highest  class.  He  had 
been  a  grocer  to  His  Majesty  Napoleon, 

[203] 


The  Story  Without  a  Na7iie 

Emperor  and  King,  in  the  fairest  days 
of  the  latter's  glory,  and  his  shop,  which 
disappeared  with  the  others  on  the  Place 
du  Carrousel,  stared  for  ten  years  with- 
out blinking  straight  into  the  eyes  of 
the  Tuileries — which  has  gone  too.  All 
imperial  grocer  that  he  was,  he  had 
neither  the  name  nor  the  appearance  of 
a  tradesman.  He  had  a  name  that 
would  have  suited  a  general — Bataille. 
In  appearance  Providence  had  made  him 
one  of  the  handsomest  men  of  an  epoch, 
when  almost  every  man  was  superb,  men 
whom  David  and  Gericault  have  painted, 
perhaps  for  our  humiliation.  Among 
the  cooks  he  was  known  as  the  good- 
looking  grocer  of  the  Carrousel.  His 
name  fitted  his  looks.  His  bearing  was 
so  miHtary  that  at  night,  with  his  claque 
and  cloak  he  surprised  the  sentinels  into 
saluting  him,  as  they  salute  a  general; 

[204] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

and  that  salute  he  returned  Hke  a  gen- 
eral, with  a  gravity  and  a  pompousness 
which  delighted  his  friends.  For  a  mo- 
ment he  was  really  the  general,  but  one 
who  rebecame  a  grocer  at  once.  He  had 
no  brains,  he  had  not  an  idea  in  his  head, 
a  fact  which  at  the  age  of  sixty  per- 
fectly explained  his  excellent  health. 
But  he  was  shrewd,  as  a  Norman  ever 
is.  The  fall  of  the  Empire  did  not  in- 
jure him;  he  abdicated  from  his  shop  as 
Napoleon  from  the  Empire,  only,  unlike 
the  latter,  there  was  no  return  from 
Elba.  He  died  very  peacefully  in  1830 
of  cholera. 

Such  was  the  individual  whom  chance 
and  revolutions  had  placed  at  the  din- 
ner-table of  the  Count  de  Lude,  in  front 
of  Mme.  de  Ferjol.  On  that  day,  in 
honor  of  his  host,  he  wore  his  finest  ap- 
parel, a  blue   coat   with   gold   buttons, 

[205] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

white  knee-breeches,  silk  stockings,  and 
high-heeled  shoes.  He  had  been  always 
aware  of  his  good  looks,  and  his  good 
looks  were  not  impaired  by  his  tailor; 
he  was  relatively  still  young,  strong, 
supple,  and  fair  with  that  fairness  that 
recalls  the  Scandinavian  origin  of  the 
Normans,  but  which  was  apparent  not 
in  his  hair,  which  was  white  as  the  wing 
of  an  albatross,  but  in  his  skin  and  its 
fresh  coloring.  His  style  was  neither 
good  nor  bad;  he  had  none.  Where 
would  he  have  got  any?  from  the  cooks 
to  whom  he  had  sold  ponies  of  brandy 
every  morning?  In  this  respect  his  ig- 
norance was  like  that  of  M.  de  Corbiere, 
who  put  his  tobacco-spotted  handker- 
chief on  the  King's  desk.  Bataille 
would  not  have  put  his,  a  silk  one, 
scented  at  that,  on  the  Count  de  Lude's 
table,  but  he  had  put  his  snuff-box  there, 

[206] 


The  Story  WitJiout  a  Name 

a  very  handsome  one,  with  a  miniature 
on  it  of  his  son,  a  horrid  little  beast,  who 
did  not  in  the  least  resemble  his  father, 
and  whom  his  father  affectionately  en- 
titled Battalson. 

It  was  in  connection  with  this  snuff- 
box, passed  to  one  of  the  guests  who  had 
asked  to  examine  the  miniature,  that  the 
Marquis  de  Pont-l'Abbe  caught  sight  of 
an  emerald  on  the  little  finger  of  the 
hand  extended  before  him. 

''See  here,  Bataille,"  he  exclaimed; 
"you  must  be  deuced  vain  to  wear  a 
ring  of  such  beauty  and  value.  Where 
in  the  world  did  you  get  such  a  mar- 
vel?" 

Bataille  laughed.  "You  could  never 
guess.  Fifty  thousand  crowns  to  twen- 
ty-five louis  that  you  can't." 

"What  nonsense!"  Pont-l'Abbe  in- 
credulously retorted. 

[207] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

"Try  and  guess,  then,"  answered 
Bataille. 

The  old  marquis  reflected  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  sought,  but  probably  did  not 
find,  a  supposition  decent  enough  to 
hazard  before  such  a  redoubtable  dev- 
otee as  Mme.  de  Ferjol,  who,  in  the 
eternal  gnawing  of  the  cancer  which 
was  eating  her  heart,  paid  no  attention 
whatever. 

"Well,"  said  Bataille,  at  last,  '1  took 
it  from  a  robber.  I  gave  him  the  change 
for  his  coin.  The  robber  was  robbed. 
It  was  odd  enough.  Would  you  like  to 
hear  how  it  happened?" 

"Yes,"  answered  the  Count  de  Lude; 
"tell  us  the  story;  it  will  help  us  on  with 
the  Chambertin." 


[208] 


XII 

4  4TT  runs  rather  far  back,"  said 
-■-  Bataille,  "for  at  that  time  the 
Emperor  was  not  yet  Emperor,  nor  was 
I  his  grocer." 

The  Empire  was  so  great  that  it  made 
even  grocers  proud,  and  Bataille  spoke 
with  an  air  of  imperial  pride. 

"Barras  then  was  chief;  under  him, 
at  the  head  of  the  police,  was  Fouche, 
who,  as  you  know,  subsequently  became 
minister  of  justice,  but  in  those  days, 
what  with  the  Jacobins  and  Chouans,  he 
had  all  he  could  attend  to.  The  police 
he  commanded  was  not  for  civil  pur- 
poses, but  political;  the  government 
ranked  ahead  of  Paris.     None  of  you 

[209] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

gentlemen  who  were  then  in  the  prov- 
inces or  abroad  can  fancy  what  Paris 
was  the  day  after  the  Revolution.  It 
had  ceased  to  be  a  capital;  it  was  not 
even  a  city,  it  was  a  cavern.  Except  in 
the  neighborhood  of  the  Palais  Royal 
not  a  street  lamp  was  to  be  seen.  The 
Revolution  had  turned  them  into  gib- 
bets. The  darkness  swarmed  with 
cut-throats;  there  was  danger  every- 
where. Unless  you  were  armed  to  the 
teeth  you  were  safe  only  at  home.  And 
even  then!    However — 

"I  lived  at  that  time  on  the  corner  of 
the  Rue  de  Sevres,  in  a  shop  which, 
when  I  pass  it,  I  always  look  at  now. 
The  iron  bars  on  the  windows  have  an 
interest  for  me.  I  will  tell  you  why. 
One  night  when  I  had  shut  up  early,  and 
had  gone  to  sleep  in  a  room  over  the 
shop,    I    was    awakened    by    a    curious 

[210] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

sound.  It  was  a  noise  like  that  of  saw- 
ing, and  I  said  to  myself,  'There  are 
thieves  downstairs.'  I  called  my  assist- 
ant, who  slept  in  the  loft,  and  we  went 
down  on  tip-toe.  I  was  right;  it  was 
thieves.  They  were  sawing  the  shutter, 
and  when  we  got  there,  they  had  made  a 
hole  in  it  about  twice  the  size  of  the 
inside  of  a  hat.  Through  that  hole  a 
hand  was  stretched;  it  had  seized  one 
of  the  bars  and  was  trying  to  loosen  it. 
The  hand  alone  was  visible;  the  man  to 
whom  it  belonged  was  behind  the  shut- 
ter, and  there  were  others  with  him,  for 
I  heard  them  whispering  together.  An 
idea  struck  me.  I  mentioned  it  to  my 
assistant,  a  young  fellow  from  here, 
from  Benneville,  who  was  sturdy  as  an 
oak,  and  not  awkward  either,  as  you 
shall  see.  He  understood  me  at  once, 
jumped  at  the  hand,  and  grasped  it  with 

[211] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

both  his  own  with  a  grip  that  was  Hke 
a  vise  for  that  hand,  which  I  then  bound 
firmly  to  the  bar  with  a  cord  that  I  had 
taken  from  the  counter. 

"  'You  won't  work  any  more,  my 
beauty,'  I  said  laughingly.  The  bandit 
was  secure  enough,  and  I  chuckled  be- 
forehand at  the  face  he  would  pull  when 
he  saw  me  the  next  morning.  We  then 
went  upstairs  again,  I  to  my  bed,  my 
assistant  to  the  loft.  But  I  did  not  sleep 
very  well.  I  kept  listening  in  spite  of 
myself.  Presently  I  thought  I  heard 
the  fall  of  departing  steps.  I  was  afraid 
to  look  out;  the  brigands  might  have 
fired  in  my  face,  and  I  did  not  want  to 
be  disfigured." 

At  this  Bataille  smiled  with  an  air  of 
vanity,  and  showed  his  white  teeth. 

"Besides,  I  knew  that  on  the  morrow 

I    should   have   my   revenge,   and   that 

[212] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

sweet  thought  killed  me  to  sleep." 
The  grocer  had  succeeded  in  interest- 
ing the  well-bred  aristocrats  who  sur- 
rounded him;  they  looked  at  him,  smil- 
ing no  longer  at  his  fine  head,  the  beauty 
of  which  they  envied  perhaps,  nor  even 
at  his  earrings,  which  he  had  worn  since 
boyhood,  and  which,  in  giving  him  the 
air  of  an  old  postilion,  revenged  them 
for  his  good  looks. 

"But  on  the  morrow,"  he  continued, 
"there  was  another  tune  to  sing.  You 
can  understand,  gentlemen,  that  I  was 
up  early,  and  that  when  I  got  into  the 
shop  my  first  look  was  for  that  devil 
of  a  hand.  I  knew  very  well  that  it  was 
tied  fast,  that  it  could  not  budge;  I  had 
bound  it  that  way.  But  at  the  first 
glance  I  almost  tumbled  over  with  as- 
tonishment; instead  of  being  swollen, 
puffed,  purple,  black  even,  as  I  had  ex- 

[213] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

pected  it  would  be  because  of  the 
strangulation  of  the  cord  with  which 
I  had  tied  it,  and  which  I  bound  so  tight 
that  it  cut  the  flesh — instead  of  that  it 
was  as  colorless  as  though  not  a  drop 
of  blood  had  circulated  in  it.  It  seemed 
exhausted,  white  and  limp  as  the  hand 
of  a  woman.  I  ran  to  the  door,  and, 
opening  it,  I  looked.  Instead  of  a  man, 
there  was  a  pool  of  blood " 

Bataille  was  not  eloquent.  In  his 
childhood  he  had  been  a  shepherd,  and 
in  talking  he  had  eccentricities  of  speech 
which  I  have  suppressed.  But  had  he 
been  eloquent,  I  give  you  my  word  he 
could  not  have  produced  a  greater  ef- 
fect. His  listeners  had  forgotten  him, 
they  were  thinking  of  the  robbers  who 
had  cut  their  accomplice's  wrist  and 
dragged  him  away. 

"Brave  fellows,  all  the  same,"  said  de 

[214] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

Lude,  who  was  energetic,  and  who 
would  have  done  as  much  himself. 

*'I  went  back  to  the  shop,"  Bataille 
continued,  and  for  a  while  I  looked  at  the 
hand,  which  had  been  sawn  at  the  fore- 
arm, probably  with  the  saw  that  had 
sawn  the  shutter.  It  was  a  curious 
hand,  one,  I  can  assure,  that  did  not  look 
like  the  hand  of  a  bandit;  and  it  was 
then  that  I  noticed  a  ring.  The  stone 
had  slipped  around  on  the  inside  of  the 
finger;  and  that  stone,  my  lord  marquis, 
is  the  emerald  before  you.  It  is  too 
handsome  for  me,  I  admit.  It  is  not 
every  day  that  I  wear  it,  and  when  I  do, 
it  is  only  with  the  idea  that  through 
some  chance  I  may  meet  the  person  to 
whom  it  belonged,  and  learn  who  the 
robber  was." 

Bataille  had  told  his  story,  and  he  had 
buried    under    it    the   jests    of   the    old 

[215] 


Tlie  Story  Without  a  Name 

marquis.  He  cut  him  out,  as  the  Eng- 
lish say.  The  guests — there  were  fully 
twenty  at  the  dinner  which  the  Count 
de  Lude  had  called  a  reunion  of  three 
classes — the  guests  were  all  curious 
about  the  emerald;  they  asked  to  see  it, 
and  it  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  At 
last  it  reached  the  guest  who  sat  at  Mme. 
de  Ferjol's  left,  the  abbot  of  a  monastery 
that  had  been  built  in  the  forest  of  Brlc- 
quebec.  It  happened  that,  in  passing 
through  St.  Sauveur,  the  Count  de  Lude 
had  asked  him  to  dinner,  in  honor  of 
Mme.  de  Ferjol,  the  saint  of  the  coun- 
try; and  he  had  placed  him  at  table  be- 
side her. 

Of  the  guests  that  were  present  this 
abbot,  Father  Augustin  by  name,  and 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  were  the  only  ones  who 
were  indifferent  to  the  emerald  that  was 

[216] 


The  Story  Without  a  Naine 

performing  its  little  circular  journey; 
and,  without  looking  at  it,  Father  Au- 
gustin  accepted  it  from  his  neighbor,  the 
Count  de  Kirkeville,  and  with  the  grav- 
ity of  a  man  who,  in  spite  of  himself,  is 
doing  a  frivolous  thing  he  offered  it  to 
Mme.  de  Ferjol.  But  Mme.  de  Ferjol, 
graver  even  than  he,  did  not  take  it ;  her 
eyes,  however,  haughtily  inattentive, 
fell  upon  the  emerald  by  chance,  and  at 
once,  as  though  struck  by  a  bullet,  she 
first  screamed,  then  fainted. 

She  had  recognized  her  husband's 
ring,  the  one  she  had  given  to  Lasthenie. 

The  astonishment  of  the  guests  equal- 
ed perhaps  her  own,  but  the  respect 
which  she  commanded  was  so  great  that 
none  of  those  who  were  present  ever 
mentioned  the  incident.  Concerning 
that  sudden  swoon  of  hers,  which  had 

[217] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

every  appearance  of  covering  a  drama, 
nothing  was  said. 

On  recovering  she  returned  to  Olonde 
and  began  looking  again  into  the  gaping 
cancer  in  her  heart.  There  was  a  new 
crevice  in  it  now;  her  daughter,  the 
daughter  of  a  de  Ferjol,  had  loved  a 
thief. 

''Lord  God!"  she  cried,  "will  this 
never  end?  Is  this  agony  inexhaust- 
ible?" 

With  a  tragic  gesture  she  tore  hair  by 
handfuls  from  her  hollowed  temples, 
and  threw  herself,  crucified  as  she  was, 
before  the  crucifix. 

Agathe,  her  servant  in  grief,  now 
eighty-five  years  of  age,  and  who,  if  one 
could  live  on  grief,  might  readily  live  to 
be  a  hundred,  entered  the  room  where 
she  lay,  and  with  the  voice  of  a  specter 
murmured: 

[218] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

"The  Reverend  Father  Abbot  of  the 
Trappe  of  Bricquebec  begs  to  see  your 
ladyship." 

"Show  him  in." 


[219] 


Xlli 

As  the  prelate  entered,  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol  rose  to  her  feet.  .  He  bowed  to 
her  with  manifest  respect,  but  he  seemed 
nervous,  ill  at  ease.  In  the  haste  in 
which  he  hd  come  to  Olonde,  it  was 
clear  that  he  had  a  duty  to  perform. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  motioned  him  to  be 
seated,  but  he  remained  standing, 

'"Madame,"  he  began,  at  once,  "I  have 
brought  you  the  ring  which  you  recog- 
nized as  your  own,  and  I  have  come  to 
tell  you,"  he  added,  solemnly,  "the  name 
of  the  man  who  lost  it — with  his  hand." 

As  he  spoke  he  offered  her  the  ring. 
But  she  did  not  take  it.  At  the  moment 
it  was  impossible  for  her  to  touch  the 

[220] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

jewel.  It  had  been  profaned,  sullied, 
ten  times  over;  and,  moreover,  it  had 
come  from  the  amputated  hand  of  a 
thief.     She  trembled  from  head  to  foot. 

'The  name — "  she  stammered. 

"Yes,"  the  prelate  interrupted,  "the 
name  of  the  man  who  ruined  your  life, 
whom  you  must  have  often  cursed,  who 
in  religion  was  known  as  Father  Riculf, 
of  the  Holy  Order  of  the  Capuchins,  and 
who,  during  Lent,  lodged  at  your  house 
twenty-five  years  ago." 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  grew  pale  as  a  ghost; 
she  felt  her  strength  departing,  but, 
svmimoning  all  her  energy,  she  prepared 
to  ask  the  question  on  which  her  whole 
life  depended.  Her  dark  eyes,  beneath 
which  Lasthenie  had  always  lowered  her 
own,  were  fixed  on  the  prelate. 
'  "Have  you  only  that  to  tell  mc?"  she 

asked. 

[221] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

"I  have  everything  to  tell  you,"  he 
answered,  "for  he,  on  the  cinders  on 
which  members  of  our  order  die,  and  on 
which,  at  peace  with  God,  he  died  a  few 
days  ago,  told  me,  in  the  last  hour,  with 
the  crucifix  at  his  lips,  that  he  alone  was 
guilty,  and  that  your  daughter  was  inno- 
cent of  the  sin." 

"It  was  I,  then!"  cried  Mme.  de  Fer- 
jol.  In  a  lightning-flash  her  entire  life 
unfolded.     "It  was  I !" 

With  incomparable  dignity  the  prel- 
ate interrupted  her  again: 

"It  is  not  for  me  to  judge  you,  ma- 
dame.  I  am  but  the  bearer  of  a  message 
which  must  be  grateful  to  a  soul  as  pure 
as  your  own,  that  your  daughter  was 
innocent,  that  the  guardian  angel  of  her 
life  was  ever  at  her  side,  gazing  at  her 
with  immaculate  and  immortal  eyes." 

He  stopped,  astonished  that  no  sigi} 

[  222  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

of  joy  was  visible  in  the  woman's  face. 
The  remorse  that  was  there,  remorse  for 
having  believed  Lasthenie  guilty,  and  of 
slowly  and  tragically  killing  her  because 
of  it,  he  did  not  understand. 

''Father,"  she  muttered,  "the  message 
comes  too  late.  It  was  I  that  killed  my 
child.  The  priest,  in  whose  guilt  I  could 
never  believe,  did  worse  than  that  in 
taking  her  in  his  sacrilegious  arms. 
But  he  did  not  kill,  he  sullied  her;  he 
left  me  to  kill  her,  and  kill  her  I  did. 
By  my  daughter's  death  I  consummated 
the  crime  which  he  began." 

With  that  she  lowered  her  head.  She 
was  self-condemned.  The  prelate  saw 
that  her  heart  was  breaking,  and  he  had 
that  pity  for  her  which  she  had  not  had 
for  her  daughter.  He  sat  down  and 
with  divine  charity  again  addressed  her. 
He  told  her  that  her  suffering  was  un- 

[  223  ] 


The  Storji  Without  a  Name 

necessary,  that  she  was  the  victim  of  an 
error  of  which  it  was  impossible  for  her 
not  to  have  been  the  victim;  and  then 
he  told  her  all. 

Concerning  certain  mysterious  facts, 
science  at  that  time  possessed  only  su- 
perficial and  inexact  data.  To-day,  if 
we  know  more,  it  is  merely  that  they 
exist. 

Like  Lady  Macbeth,  Lasthenle  had 
been  a  somnambulist.  It  may  be  that 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  had  never  read  Shakes- 
pere. 

In  one  of  her  accesses,  which  were  so 
infrequent  that  neither  her  mother  nor 
Agathe  was  aware  of  them,  Lasthenie 
had  left  her  room  and  sat  on  the  great 
stairway  where  so  many  of  her  waking 
hours  had  been  passed;  there  Riculf  dis- 
covered her,  and,  tempted  by  the  demon 
of    solitary    nights,    accomplished    the 

[224] 


TJie  Story  Without  a  Name 

crime,  of  which  the  unfortunate  girl,  in 
the  ignorance  of  sleep,  had  been  wholly 
unconscious.  But  why,  the  crime  ac- 
complished, had  he  taken  the  ring? 
Was  he  already  the  thief  which  he  after- 
wards became?  Who  shall  say?  In  the 
nature  of  man  there  are  mysteries  which 
as  yet  are  unexplained.  Somnambu- 
lists sometimes  make  presents,  though 
that  proves  nothing.  For  my  part  I 
knew  one — a  young  girl — who  gave  a 
ring  to  a  man  guilty  of  the  same  crime 
as  Riculf,  and  who  afterwards,  volun- 
tarily, though  with  an  unconquerable 
dread,  married  the  horrible  betrothed  of 
her  sleep. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  had  never  heard  of 
somnambulism.  What  the  prelate  said 
stupefied  her;  she  was  medusa'd  by  the 
malignity  of  the  man  who  had  entered 
her  life  and  her  daughter's  like  a  vam- 

[225] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

pire,  and  who,  falling  from  the  mon- 
strous to  the  ignominious,  had  sunk  to 
the  pettiness  of  theft.  It  was  here  that 
the  blue  blood  she  had  in  her  revolted, 
and  the  thought  of  the  theft  became 
more  insupportable  than  the  crime. 
For  the  moment  she  hesitated  to  believe 
in  that  final  turpitude  which  sullied  her 
daughter  twice  over.  But  the  prelate 
assured  her  that  the  amputated  hand  of 
the  robber  had  really  been  that  of  Riculf, 
who,  as  it  appeared,  had  become  one  of 
the  foremost  bandits  of  the  day.  When 
Agathe  met  him  on  the  stairway  that 
had  been  the  spectator  of  his  crime  he 
was  on  his  way  to  every  vice.  They 
were  all  of  them  cooking  then  in  the 
pot  in  which  the  Revolution  bubbled 
over  on  the  world.  It  was  an  hour  when 
the  Church  herself  had  need  of  persecu- 
tion    and     the     revivifying     blood     of 

[226] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

martyrs.  Years  later  Riculf  had  come 
one  evening  to  the  monastery  of  Bric- 
quebec.  His  despair  was  great;  his  re- 
pentance such  as  only  visits  the  strong. 

"If  you  drive  me  away,"  he  said  to  the 
abbot,  "you  send  me  back  to  the  hell 
from  which  I  come." 

"I  and  my  brethren,"  the  prelate  con- 
tinued, "remembered  that  La  Trappe  is 
the  refuge  of  criminals  unpunished  by 
men,  and  in  the  name  of  celestial  char- 
ity we  opened  our  door  to  him  and  shut 
it  against  the  justice  of  the  world. 
Father  Riculf  was  one  of  those  who  are 
excessive  in  all  things.  He  endured  for 
years  among  us  in  the  most  expiating 
penitence." 

"And  died  like  a  saint,  I  suppose," 
Mme.  de  Ferjol  indignantly  interjected. 

But  in  a  moment  she  was  calmer,  and 
less  insultingly  she  asked: 

[227] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

"Father,  do  you  think  that  such  a  man 
can  enter  heaven?" 

Solemnly  the  benignant  prelate  an- 
swered: "For  years  he  lived,  as  he 
died,  in  that  hope." 

"If  he  is  in  heaven,  I  do  not  v^ant  to 
be  there  with  him,"  exclaimed  Mme.  de 
Ferjol,  with  a  blind  obstinacy  that  fully 
expressed  her  indignant  rage. 

But  the  abbot,  though  deeply  wound- 
ed, was  too  charitable  to  forsake 
the  pitiless.  He  returned  more  than 
once  to  Olonde,  endeavoring  as  best  he 
might  to  lead  her  back  to  more  Christian 
sentiments. 

In  this  he  failed.  She  resisted  his 
persuasions.  In  the  knowledge  that  her 
child  was  innocent,  a  hatred  of  the  Cap- 
uchin who  had  sullied  her  enveloped  her 
and  confiscated  to  its  own  profit  the 
higher  sentiments  of  her  creed.     God, 

[  228  ] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

it  may  be,  had  forgiven,  but  she  could 
not.  Hatred  possessed  her  wholly. 
The  prelate  tried  to  soften  her,  and, 
with  that  emollient  oil  which  the  good 
Samaritan  used  on  him  who  went  down 
from  Jerusalem  to  Jericho,  he  en- 
deavored to  soothe  the  ulcer  that 
ravaged  in  her  heart.  But  the  effort 
was  vain.  Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  inflex- 
ible. The  memory  of  hospitality  vio- 
lated by  a  priest  whom  she  called  a 
Judas,  heightened  her  hate,  and  from  it 
— this  is  a  thing  which  every  passionate 
nature  will  appreciate — a  horrible  de- 
sire came,  a  curiosity  which  she  felt  she 
must  satisfy. 

Mme.  de  Ferjol  was  well  informed  in 
all  religious  observances.  She  knew 
that  the  Trappists  are  buried  without  a 
coffin,  that  they  remain  exposed,  the  face 
unveiled,  in  an  open  grave,  and  that  over 

[229] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

the  body  each  day  a  spadeful  of  earth 
is  thrown  until  it  is'  covered  by  that  six 
feet  of  clay  which  suffices  to  us  all. 
Her  desire  was  to  see  once  again  the  ab- 
horred Riculf,  to  gorge  her  eyes  on  the 
spectacle  of  his  corpse.  Hatred  is  like 
love;  it  must  see. 

He  died,  she  reflected,  but  recently. 
The  face  of  the  elect  is  not  like  that 
of  other  men.  When  their  tomb  is 
opened  their  calm  yet  radiant  expression 
shows  that  they  died  in  the  odor  of  sanc- 
tity. I  will  see  if  this  scoundrel,  who 
may  have  duped  the  abbot  with  his  re- 
pentance, as  he  duped  me  with  his  holi- 
ness, has  the  face  of  the  elect. 

One  day,  without  a  word  to  Agathe, 
she  went  to  Bricquebec.  Women  are 
not  allowed  within  the  walls  of  a  Trap- 
pist  monastery  save  on  certain  festivals, 
and  then  only  in  the  church;  but  the 

[230] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

cemetery,  situated  always  in  an  adjacent 
field  is  open  to  everyone.  It  was  there 
that  Mme.  de  Ferjol  went. 

What  she  sought  was  easily  found. 
There  was  no  one  in  the  cemetery,  and 
amid  the  long  grass  she  discovered  a  re- 
cent grave,  which  she  knew  must  be  that 
of  Riculf.  She  approached  the  edge  and 
looked  down.  In  her  eyes  was  that  ex- 
pression which  hatred  shares  with  love, 
a  longing  to  devour.  The  corpse  was 
there.  In  spite  of  the  handfuls  of  earth 
strewn  on  it,  the  face  of  a  man  was  still 
visible,  and,  in  spite  of  years,  in  spite  of 
the  beard  that  had  grown  white,  in  spite 
of  the  sightless  eyes  which  worms  were 
eating,  she  recognized  it  at  once;  and 
the  worms  she  envied;  she  would  have 
liked  to  have  been  one  of  them.  The 
audacious  mouth,  which  had  startled  her 
before,  and  on  which  God  with  his  own 

[231] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

hand  had  placed  a  warning,  she  recog- 
nized as  well.  Standing  beside  the 
grave,  forgetful  of  the  time  that  passed, 
her  eyes  sank  into  the  hated  mouth  that 
was  rottening  there,  as  the  sun  sinks  in 
the  horizon. 

The  sun  was  behind  her,  and  her 
shadow,  lengthened  by  it,  fell  into  the 
tomb,  her  black  gown  reddened  by  its 
rays.  Suddenly  another  shadow"  fell 
beside  her  own,,  and  a  hand  rested 
on  her  arm.     She  trembled  and  turned. 

It  was  the  abbot. 

*'You?"  he  said,  with  less  astonish- 
ment than  gravity — "you,  niadame?" 

"Yes,"  she  answered,  with  a  voice  that 
trembled  too;  "I  wanted  to  slake  my 
hate." 

"Madame,"  the  prelate  interrupted, 
"you  are  a  Christian  but  what  you  say 
is  unchristianlike.     To  stare  at  the  dead 

[232] 


The  Story  Without  a  Name 

with  eyes  of  hate  is  profanation,  and  to 
the  dead  respect  is  due." 

"To  him,  never!"  she  cried.  "A  mo- 
ment ago  I  was  about  to  get  down  into 
his  grave  and  trample  him  under  my 
feet." 

"Poor  woman !"  the  prelate  murmured 
to  himself,  "she  will  die  unrepentant  of 
feelings  that  are  too  absolute  for  this 
Hfe." 

And,  for  that  matter,  she  did  die 
shortly  after,  in  that  sublime  impeni- 
tence which  the  world  may  admire,  but 
which  we  cannot. 


[233] 


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